http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/world/middleeast/human-rights-in-iran-have-worsened-un-investigator-says.html 2014-10-27 23:52:52 Human Rights in Iran Have Worsened, U.N. Investigator Says The investigator, Ahmed Shaheed, said executions and oppression of women have increased, even as Iran’s president seeks rapprochement with the West. === UNITED NATIONS — Executions have surged in The investigator, Ahmed Shaheed, a former diplomat from the Maldives and now special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, made the comments on the eve of presenting his Mr. Shaheed said he had been shocked by the In a briefing with reporters Monday morning, Mr. Shaheed suggested that Mr. Rouhani had only “limited authority” to make the broad changes that he promised when elected in June 2013. Between July 2013 and June 2014, Mr. Shaheed’s report says, at least 852 people were executed, in what he called an alarming increase from rates that were already high. Among those put to death were at least eight juvenile offenders and four minority Arabs whom Mr. Shaheed described as “cultural rights activists.” The death penalty can be applied in Iran for adultery, recidivist alcohol use, drug possession and trafficking, as well as crimes in which a person “points a weapon at members of the public to kill, frighten and coerce them,” the report said. Mr. Shaheed said minorities are sometimes charged for “exercising their rights to peaceful expression and association.” Iran’s leaders have sought to discredit Mr. Shaheed, describing him as a lackey of the country’s Western adversaries. A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Mr. Shaheed’s report contains the government’s rebuttal to his findings, including its contention that Iran does not prosecute anyone on the basis of ethnicity. He gave credit to the government for a new penal code that removes references to witchcraft, apostasy and heresy. The report comes at an increasingly delicate time for Iran’s international image. A Nov. 24 deadline is looming in its negotiations with the United States and other powerful countries on limiting its nuclear program, in exchange for a lifting of onerous economic sanctions. Mr. Shaheed has vexed Iran’s leaders since his appointment in 2011. He has said he has not been allowed into the country but has interviewed 400 Iranians, about a third of them living in Iran, including some prisoners who spoke to him on smuggled cellphones. The rest are in exile. Shortly after his appointment, Mr. Shaheed met here with Iranian diplomats, who quizzed him on his knowledge of verses from the Quran. One was about the importance of conducting investigations fairly. (Mr. Shaheed is Muslim, and he told them he knew the verses, which he described as “very basic.”) Since then, he has produced seven reports to the United Nations. In the latest, he emphasizes what he calls worsening conditions for Iranian women. Girls as young as 9 can be married, so long as a court gives its blessings. “Nonconsensual sexual relations in marriage” are allowed under the law. A woman trying to leave an abusive marriage must prove “a significant risk of bodily harm,” while a woman seeking a divorce on the grounds of domestic violence must prove that the violence is “intolerable.” New quotas that limit women’s higher education, he said, have sharply reduced the percentage of female students entering university. In addition, he pointed to laws that restrict the ability of unmarried women to work. The report says at least 35 journalists are in detention. The managers of a website accused of helping foreign media networks were sentenced to up to 11 years in prison. Many websites are blocked, including Facebook and Twitter, though Iranians commonly circumvent those controls. Mr. Rouhani has 269,000 followers on Twitter.