Iran: Imminent Threat to Amputate Prisoners' Fingers

April 9, 2025 12:00PM EDT|News Release

Halt Acts of Torture

(Beirut) – Iranian authorities are preparing to carry out finger amputation sentences, as early as April 11, 2025, against three men imprisoned for theft following grossly unfair trials, Human Rights Watch said today. All United Nations member states should urgently call on Iran to abide by its human rights obligations and immediately revoke these sentences. 

An informed source told Human Rights Watch that on March 13, the office in charge of implementing sentences in Urmia Central Prison in West Azerbaijan Province summoned Hadi Rostami, 38, Mehdi Sharifian, 42, and Mehdi Shahivand, 29, and gave them a letter from prosecutorial officials notifying them that their sentences would be carried out as early as April 11.

“Amputation is torture, plain and simple. Yet Iran persists in carrying out cruel and inhuman punishments that fly in the face of its human rights obligations,” said Bahar Saba, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. “All officials responsible for ordering and carrying out acts of torture, including any medical professionals participating in them, will be liable for criminal prosecution under international law.” 

Authorities’ plans for amputating the three men’s four fingers come in the wake of the gruesome amputation of fingers of two brothers, Mehrdad Teimouri and Shahab Teimouri, also in Urmia Central Prison, in October 2024. At least two other men face amputation sentences in the same prison. Under Iran’s laws, amputations are in principle carried out without any anaesthesia. 

Iranian authorities detained the three men in August 2017 over accusations that they had broken into several houses and robbed safes. In November 2019, following a grossly unfair trial, Branch 1 of Criminal Court 1 in West Azerbaijan province convicted the men of theft. The court sentenced all three to amputations of four fingers of their right hands in a manner that “only the palm of their hands and thumbs are left.”

Evidence strongly suggests that the trial was grossly unfair. According to case information reviewed by Human Rights Watch and accounts of informed sources, the men did not have access to lawyers during the investigation phase and only saw a lawyer twice; , once when they signed the retention documents and once during the court hearings. The men have also said that that the authorities tortured and ill-treated them while in the custody of the police’s Investigation Unit (Agahi) in Urmia. The sources indicate that authorities coerced the men into making statements incriminating themselves and each other by beating and flogging them and suspending them from their hands and wrists. All three men subsequently retracted their confessions, but the court relied on the torture-tainted self-incriminating statements to convict them.  

Rostami has made torture complaints to high-ranking judicial officials on several occasions. Human Rights Watch has reviewed two letters he wrote, addressed in September 2020 and December 2022 respectively to the heads of Iran’s Judiciary and the Justice Department in West Azerbaijan province. 

Rostami states in the letters that he denied the charges but that police officials subjected him to torture and other ill-treatment by beating him. He said they then coerced him into signing a blank piece of paper that he later discovered was filled with incriminating statements attributed to him when he was taken before prosecution officials. 

The authorities have dismissed all these complaints and failed to conduct prompt, independent, transparent, and thorough investigations as required under international law. The Supreme Court verdict reviewed by Human Rights Watch confirms that Rostami had raised allegations of torture, informing judicial authorities that his self-incriminating statements had been extracted under torture. The court nonetheless upheld the amputation sentences without ordering investigation into the allegations. 

Based on documentation by Amnesty International, the authorities also subjected Rostami to torture in February 2021 by carrying out a flogging sentence of 60 lashes for “disrupting prison order” in retaliation for a hunger strike. 

The three men have spent eight years in prison facing repeated threats that authorities would carry out the amputations, threats that themselves constitute a form of torture or other ill-treatment. In a November 2024 letter, the men described the mental anguish they and their families had experienced as a “horrific nightmare that could become reality any second.” In a March 2025 letter published by the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, Rostami once again appealed to the international community and human rights organizations for urgent action to stop the implementation of these inhumane and cruel punishments. 

At least two other men, Kasra Karami and Morteza Esmaeilian, are also held in Urmia Central Prison facing amputation sentences. 

Iran remains among the handful of countries that retain, impose, and implement corporal punishments. Under international law, cruel and inhumane punishments such as flogging and amputations are strictly prohibited. All states parties to the Convention against Torture are obligated to prosecute or extradite for prosecution anyone suspected of torture within their territories, Human Rights Watch said. 

Iran’s legislation governing the implementation of death sentences and corporal punishments requires the presence of medical professionals at the site where amputations are carried out. Amputations, under the law, are carried out without any anaesthesia unless it is deemed that their implementation without local or general anaesthesia would result in injuries excessive to what has been judicially ordered.

Under ethical codes for medical professionals, including the World Medical Assembly’s 1975 Declaration of Tokyo, doctors and other medical practitioners are prohibited, in unambiguous terms, from countenancing, condoning, or participating in torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishments and treatments. They must not provide any premises, instruments, substances, or knowledge to facilitate the commission of torture and other ill-treatment or be present during such acts. As with other officials, medical practitioners who participate in torture may be criminally liable.

All member states of the UN should forcefully condemn amputation sentences and other forms of corporal punishment and take action to prevent them, Human Rights Watch said. Countries that have universal jurisdiction provisions should criminally investigate and prosecute anyone suspected of criminal responsibility for acts of torture, including those that are judicially sanctioned, such as amputations and floggings.