Iran’s Justice Minister for Human Rights said people who knowingly spread coronavirus should be sentenced to death, Radio Farda reported on Tuesday.
According to a local Iranian news site, Iran’s Deputy Justice Minister for Human Rights and International Affairs, Mahmoud Abbasi, recently said: “Someone who is fully aware of his [coronavirus] infection and without wearing a mask sneezes and coughs … spreads the coronavirus to others and ultimately causes their death. This means deliberate murder and is subject to Qisas.”
“Qisas” is “literal eye-for-an-eye punishment” under Islamic law, which allows the retribution “in cases of personal injury,” Agence France-Presse explained. In the case of causing someone’s death, the punishment would then be death.
In the application of qisas to those who knowingly spread the deadly coronavirus, Abbasi reportedly said offenders should be hanged, according to Radio Farda.
“[Coronavirus] restrictions and bans announced by the president must be implemented by everyone according to the constitution,” Abbasi added, according to the report.
Iran’s coronavirus outbreak was one of the world’s earliest after China, owing to Tehran’s close relationship with Beijing. It has continued to rank as one of the deadliest outbreaks globally. Last week, Iran’s health minister blamed the ruling regime for “losing control” of the spiraling the crisis, blasting the government’s failure to contain the virus’s spread as “embarrassing.”
At press time on Tuesday, Iran officially reported a total of 262,173 infections and 13,211 deaths from the Chinese coronavirus. These figures appear low to international health authorities, who doubt Iran’s officially reported coronavirus data.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran reports much higher figures. The dissident group on Tuesday recorded at least 70,800 coronavirus deaths in Iran, with “over 17,630 in Tehran alone.”
Radio Farda is the Persian branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.