Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has pardoned or commuted the sentences of nearly 3,000 prisoners following a written request from the head of the judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, the Iranian news agency Tasnim reported on Friday.
The pardons also included sentence reductions and were granted on the occasion of the birthday celebrations for the Islamic prophet Mohammed and the Shia scholar Jafar al-Sadiq.
According to the state news agency IRNA, the death penalties of 59 convicts were also converted into prison sentences.
Of the total 2,887 pardons, most convictions originated from general and revolutionary courts. In 1,291 cases, the prisoners are to be released, while 1,596 other inmates will receive sentence reductions. Additionally, 40 foreigners were pardoned.
Khamenei regularly pardons prisoners, often around Islamic holidays. The religious leadership portrays this as showing mercy.
Following the nationwide protests in the autumn of 2022, the religious leader pardoned tens of thousands of prisoners. At that time, activists criticized the pardons as a distraction from the repressive government policies.
On Wednesday, the well-known politician Faezeh Hashemi, daughter of the late former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was released from prison early. She was arrested at the end of September 2022 and sentenced to five years in prison in the wake of the protest wave.
An Austrian imprisoned in Iran was released a few days ago.
