FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE:IRELAND MUST continue to push Iran on its human rights violations, the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs was told yesterday.

Committee members were informed that 388 people were executed in 2009, and at least 190 people have been killed since the beginning of this year.

An Amnesty International Ireland delegation led by executive director Colm O’Gorman said most of the executions had taken place after trials that were in violation of international law and which included evidence obtained from forced confessions.

Dr Roja Fazaeli, Iran co-ordinator for Amnesty International Ireland, said Iranian authorities continued to use the practice of stoning as a method of execution, and that many such executions took place in public.

Maryam Hoseeinkhan, a journalist and former Iranian prisoner of conscience, described how her lawyer, Nasrin Sotoodeh, had been arrested this year for her support of human rights activists. Ms Sotoodeh is being held in solitary confinement in Evin Prison in Tehran, where she is reported to be in the third week of a hunger strike.

Michael D Higgins (Labour) said he had been informed that lawyers were often targeted by the authorities in Iran, while Senator David Norris (Independent) referred to collaboration by the media in Iran who routinely film forced confessions. Senator Norris expressed surprise to hear of the large number of rapes of male prisoners, which was “extraordinary for such a homophobic country”.

Committee chairman Michael Woods (Fianna Fáil) said he would be writing to the incoming Iranian ambassador, who is to gain his credentials shortly, on behalf of the committee about a number of individual cases highlighted by Amnesty International and about the human rights situation in the country in general.