Saturday, August 04, 2007

NEWS)))))

Iranian regime hanged the killers of a judge on Thursday.
Majid Kavousifar and Hossein Kavousifar, his nephew, were hanged in front of Tehran's Ershad judiciary complex, where they shot dead judge Hassan Moghaddas in his car in 2005.
The two were not political activists, but Tehran's public prosecutor said Majid had believed the judge was corrupt. The prosecutor said the killers were also convicted of armed robbery and other murders.
Iran has one of the highest rates of execution in the world.
Hoods over the heads of the judge's killers were removed before the hangings, which took place from the back of tow trucks in front of a giant portrait of Moghaddas. Hossein looked pale and cried. He was in his early twenties. His uncle smiled and waved goodbye to friends. Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi said: "the two were terrorists."
Dozens of people have been executed for rape, smuggling and other offences in Iran in recent weeks. Most were arrested in a crackdown on "immoral behavior", which began in April.
Also Iranian regime hanged nine men on Wednesday for rape, armed robbery and other offences. Some 16 people were hanged in July.Murder, rape, adultery, armed robbery, apostasy and drug smuggling are all punishable by death under Iran's Islamic Sharia law, imposed since the 1979 revolution.

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Iranian authorities hanged seven people in public on Wednesday, official state media reported while showing images of the men hanging.
Five men were hanged in the city of Mashad, north-east Iran. State television aired footage of the hanging. The men, all handcuffed, were hanged under a banner which read, "Implementation of justice equals improvement of security”.Two other men were executed elsewhere in Mashad, state media reported.
All seven were accused of charges including rape, kidnapping and robbery.Iranian authorities routinely execute dissidents on bogus charges such as armed robbery and drug smuggling.


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Associated Press reported that the Iranian judiciary confirmed that two journalists from the country's Kurdish minority have been sentenced to death, state media reported Tuesday.
The two men, Adnan Hassanpour and Hiva Boutimar, were sentenced on the charge of "moharebeh,'' a term Iran uses to describe a major crime against Islam and the state, judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told the Islamic Republic News Agency. "Moharebeh'' literally means "fighting'' in classical Arabic. The journalists were deemed activists in Sanandaj, the capital of the western Iranian province of Kurdistan, which borders Iraq. They were detained after Kurds protested in Sanandaj in 2005.
Meanwhile The European Union called on Iran on Friday to stay the execution of two Kurdish journalists accused of having ties to armed groups.
“The EU is especially concerned about the death sentences on the two Kurdish journalists, Adnan Hassanpour and Abdolwahed Boutimar”, said a declaration by the EU’s Portuguese Presidency. “The EU calls on the Islamic Republic of Iran to halt the executions of Adnan Hassanpour and of Abdolwahed Boutimar and to ensure that the two accused be given a fair trial”, it said. Both men were handed down death sentences on 16 July by a court in Iran’s north-western province of Kurdistan.The 27-nation block also expressed deep concern about the “series of collective public executions” that have been taking place in several regions of Iran during the last month, as well as with the “growing number of death sentences both at first level courts and at the Supreme Court”.
“The EU is also particularly troubled by the growing repression against all groups which exercise their right to freely express their opinions, in particular in Kurdish and Arab minority regions”, the statement said.
“The EU, while condemning the increasing recourse to the death penalty in the Islamic Republic of Iran, reiterates its longstanding opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances”, it added