By Maryam Manzoori | 2025-04-27

United Nations (UN) human rights experts have asked Tehran to call off plans to amputate the fingers of three prisoners at Urmia detention center, condemning the punishment as a violation of international law against torture.

Three men convicted of theft in November 2019 were facing the punishment in early April, according to UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Islamic Republic Mai Sato and special rapporteur on torture Alice Jill Edwards.

It is not yet known whether the amputations have been performed.

Under the Islamic Republic's penal code, the sentence involves removing four fingers from the right hand, leaving only the thumb and palm intact.

"Iran must immediately stop this severe corporal punishment, which violates international human rights standards," Sato and Edwards, independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, said in an April 10 statement.

Such punishments are explicitly prohibited under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of which Iran is a state party.

Human Rights Watch, the World Medical Association (WMA) and Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) also have voiced grave concerns about the fairness of the trial and allegations of torture-induced confessions.

The Islamic Republic has long faced criticism for its enforcement of amputations and other corporal punishments, which became a formalized aspect of its judicial system following the 1979 revolution, Iran International reported.

The Iranian regime executed at least 975 people in 2024, the highest number recorded since 2008, per IHR and Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM).

According to the UN Human Rights office, the Islamic Republic sentenced at least 237 people to amputation between January 2000 and September 24, 2020.

"Iran has carried out amputations for years, and the actual numbers are much higher than what is reported in media outlets," IHR director Amiry Moghadam told Iran International.

Cruel, degrading, inhumane

In October, the fingers of brothers Mehrdad and Shahab Teimouri were amputated at the same prison -- Urmia detention center -- where several other inmates are facing similar sentences, according to the UN experts.

"Amputation purposely inflicts extreme pain, irreversible disability and obliterates human dignity," WMA president Ashok Philip said in a November 1 statement re-shared by the organization on April 10.

"As such, it constitutes a cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment," he said.

"In the Islamic Republic of Iran, they don't hesitate to kill, torture, hang and blind people," said Tehran resident Ibrahim, 65, who asked to withhold his last for security reasons.

Corporal punishment "is a tool in their hands to control others," he told Pishtaz.

If the Islamic Republic fairly enforced its amputation laws, its corrupt leaders who steal national resources would be the most deserving of losing their fingers, Ibrahim said.