A Comparative Analysis of Legal and Judicial Mitigating Circumstances in the Criminal Justice Systems of Afghanistan and Iran

Legislators often reduce punishments or prevent their enforcement to achieve higher objectives. These reductions and exemptions fall under the concepts of legally mitigating circumstances or judicial and statutory exemptions. The Islamic Republic of Iran and Afghanistan addressed this issue under criminal law. This study highlights numerous similarities between the two legal systems. However, certain differences are influenced by the distinct legal perspective of each country. Afghanistan's Penal Code (1974) and Penal Code (2017) categorized offenses into three groups based on their severity: felonies, misdemeanors, and infractions. This classification appears to facilitate the mitigation of punishments more readily than Iran's Islamic Penal Code, which does not adopt this categorization. Nonetheless, the new approach in the 2013 Islamic Penal Code indicates that the legislator of the Islamic Republic of Iran has made serious efforts and positive steps to clarify ambiguities in the 1991 Islamic Penal Code.