to punish prisoners or to coerce “confessions”. In June, detainee Nader Dastanpour died in custody as a result of injuries that his family said were inflicted during torture at a Tehran police station. No independent investigation was reported. Cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment Judicial authorities continued to impose and carry out cruel, inhuman or degrading punishments that amounted to torture, including floggings, blindings and amputations. These were sometimes carried out in public. In April, the Public Prosecutor of Golpayegan, Esfahan Province, announced that a man and woman convicted of “having an illegitimate relationship” had been sentenced to 100 lashes each. In May, the Public Prosecutor of Qazvin Province announced that the authorities had arrested 35 young women and men “dancing and mingling at a graduation party… while half-naked and consuming alcohol” and convicted them within 24 hours of engaging in acts “incompatible with chastity which disturbed the public opinion”. The authorities carried out the 99-lash floggings to which they were sentenced at a special court hearing the same day. In West Azerbaijan Province, authorities carried out flogging sentences of between 30 and 100 lashes against 17 miners who had engaged in a protest against employment conditions and dismissals at the Agh Darreh gold mine in 2014. In June, a criminal court in Yazd Province sentenced nine miners to floggings ranging from 30 to 50 lashes. In July, an appeal court sentenced journalist and blogger Mohammad Reza Fathi to 459 lashes on charges of “publishing lies” and “creating unease in the public mind” through his writings. In November, a man was forcibly blinded in both eyes in Tehran, in retribution for blinding a four-year-old girl in June 2009. Several other prisoners including Mojtaba Yasaveli and Hossein Zareyian remained at risk of being forcibly blinded. Doctors Amnesty International Report 2016/17 associated with the official Legal Medicine Organization of Iran provided the Supreme Court with “expert” advice on how the implementation of blinding sentences was medically feasible, an act that breached medical ethics. In April, judicial authorities at Mashhad Central Prison amputated four fingers from the right hand and the toes from the left foot of a man convicted of armed robbery. The same authorities amputated the fingers of another man convicted of robbery in May. In August, a judicial official in Tehran announced that several men had appealed after they were sentenced to amputation of four fingers from one hand. In December, judicial authorities at Urumieh Central Prison amputated four fingers from the right hands of two brothers convicted of armed robbery. UNFAIR TRIALS Trials, including those resulting in death sentences, were generally unfair. The judiciary was not independent. The Special Court for the Clergy and the Revolutionary Courts remained particularly susceptible to pressure from security and intelligence forces to convict defendants and impose harsh sentences. Officials exercising judicial powers, including from the Ministry of Intelligence and Revolutionary Guards, consistently flouted due process provisions of the 2015 Code of Criminal Procedure. These included provisions protecting the right to access a lawyer from the time of arrest and during investigations and the right to remain silent. Defence lawyers were frequently denied full access to case files and prevented from meeting defendants until shortly before trial. Pre-trial detainees were frequently held in prolonged solitary confinement, with little or no access to their families and lawyers. “Confessions” extracted under torture were used as evidence at trial. Judges often failed to deliver reasoned judgments and the judiciary did not make court judgments publicly available. The Office of the Prosecutor used Article 48 of the Code of Criminal Procedure to 193