Title: Codifying Repression
An Assessment of Iran’s New Penal Code
Place of publication: US
Publisher: Human Rights Watch
Release date: 2012
In January 2012 the Guardian Council, an unelected body of 12 religious jurists charged with vetting all legislation to ensure its compatibility with Iran’s constitution and shari’a, or Islamic law, approved the final text of an amended penal code. While President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has not yet promulgated the new bill into law, Iranian officials have described the amendments to the Islamic Penal Code— including more than 737 articles and 204 notes that address various issues ranging from extraterritoriality to the applicability and implementation of punishments—as a new and improved set of laws, and repeatedly cited them as an example of the government’s serious attempt to comply with its international human rights obligations.

However, many problematic provisions of the old penal code remain unchanged, and some of the amendments actually represent a weakening of the rights of criminal defendants and convicts. In many cases the new provisions ignore serious concerns about the severity of the penal provisions and their legality under international law. Some provisions touted as marked improvements by Iranian officials would actually allow judges wide discretion to issue punishments that clearly violate the rights of the accused.[1]