Iran has executed more than 200 people in the three months since new President Hassan Rouhani took office, says a report in E-Kurd. According to a former reformist Member of Parliament, Rouhani’s Special Assistant in Ethnic and Minority Affairs Ali Younesi expressed his dismay at the recent executions in Kurdistan and said that “extremist elements” were responsible for them. Former MP Hassel Dasseh told Kurdish news website NNS ROJ that during a meeting on November 5 with Younesi and political activists, Younesi expressed sadness and regret about the recent executions and the intensified crackdown in Kurdistan.

Since Rouhani took office this August, a sharp increase in the number of executions, specifically among drug traffickers, Kurdish activists and Kurdish political prisoners, has created concern among civil society that extremist groups in the Iranian Judiciary and security apparatus have adopted this violent approach to show that the status quo remains. Iran has hanged 40 people over the past ten days. On November 3 and 4 alone,www.Ekurd.net authorities executed 12 people in different cities in Iran. On October 8, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran and the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center jointly called for an immediate moratorium on executions in Iran given the alarming rise in the use of the death penalty in recent weeks.