Iran executes leader of women trafficking network

Iran’s judiciary announced on Saturday that it had carried out the execution of Shahrooz Sokhanvari, also known as “Alex,” who headed a network involved in trafficking Iranian women to neighboring countries for prostitution.

The judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported that Sokhanvari was responsible for leading an “escort and trafficking network of Iranian women and girls to some countries in the region.”

He was executed for the crime of human trafficking for the purpose of prostitution.

In 2020, Iranian media had reported that “Alex” had been apprehended in Malaysia with the cooperation of Interpol and subsequently extradited to Iran.

He was sentenced to death in September 2021 on charges of “corruption on earth,” a term used by Iranian authorities to encompass various offenses, including moral-related crimes.

The HRANA news agency, an activist outlet, stated that several women were also arrested in connection with the same case and were facing severe charges.

According to a recent report by Amnesty International, recorded executions in Iran escalated from 314 in 2021 to 576 in 2022, making Iran the second-highest executioner in the world after China.

Notably, two women were sentenced to death two years ago on charges of “corruption on earth” and human trafficking, but advocates argue that these women were innocent and were actually LGBT rights activists.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration in 2017 added Iran to a U.S. list of countries accused of failing to crack down on human trafficking.

Two years later, the U.S. State Department again designated Iran as a so-called Tier 3 country, the report’s ranking for countries that do the least to tackle the crime.

Under the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, the United States does not provide non-humanitarian, non-trade-related foreign assistance to any country that does not comply with minimum standards for eliminating trafficking and is not making efforts to do so.

“The Government of Iran does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so,” the State Department said in its 2019 report.

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