[ADN Kronos] One woman and three men were hanged in Tehran's Evin prison on Wednesday, the Iran Human Rights website reported. The woman, identified as Zeynab Nazarzadeh, 28, was convicted of murdering her husband. The three men were identified as Hamid, Safar Ali and Hassan Ali.
Nine men and one woman were reportedly scheduled to be executed on Wedneday, but execution of six of them was postponed for six months.
A 17-year-old boy was among those scheduled to be executed on Wednesday. Two other youths, who committed crimes as minors, Amir Khaleghi, 18, and Safar Angooti, 19, were also among those due to be executed on Wednesday.
According to the human rights activist Asieh Amini's personal blog, Angooti and Khaleghi were not executed this morning.
Iran Human Rights said it was investigating details about the others who were executed on Wednesday.
Also on Wednesday, human rights group Amnesty International held symbolic protests in Britain's capital, London, and in the Italian capital, Rome and other cities at the recent hanging of young Iranian woman, Delara Darabi. Amnesty said its secretary-general, Irene Khan, and anti-death penalty campaigners would lay white lilies outside the Iranian embassy in London.
Amnesty's Italian branch was due to make the same gesture of protest outside the Iranian embassy in Rome and its consulate in the northern Italian city of Milan.
That'll show 'em.
Darabi was executed last Friday despite having received a two-month stay of execution by the head of the Iranian judiciary on 19 April. Her lawyer was not given the 48 hours notice of her execution required by law, Amnesty said.
Folks, it's a dictatorship ...
Amnesty does not consider her trial to have been fair, as the courts later refused to consider new evidence which Darabi's lawyer said would have proved she could not have committed the murder.
Moroever, Darabi was 17 when she alleged murdered a relative in 2003. She initially confessed to the murder, saying she believed she could could save her 19-year-old boyfriend from execution for the crime, but later retracted her confession.
International law unequivocally bans the execution of people convicted of crimes committed when under the age of 18, Amnesty noted.
Worked well, didn't it ...
Darabi's killing brings the number of executions in Iran this year to 140. She is the second woman known to have been executed. Iran has executed at least 42 juvenile offenders since 1990, eight of them in 2008 and one on 21 January this year.
Amnesty campaigned to save Darabi's life since her case came to light in 2006, urging the Iranian authorities to commute her death sentence and calling for a re-trial according to international standards.
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Posted by: Fred ||
05/07/2009 00:00 ||
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[Iran Press TV Latest] Political heavyweights in Washington say they no longer seek a "regime change" in Iran, urging the country to begin engagement with the US in earnest.
Two days after former US House speaker, Newt Gingrich, openly advocated regime change in Iran in an address to the 2009 AIPAC policy conference, Senator John Kerry, a Democrat, said that Washington is not in a 'regime change mode'.
"Our efforts must be reciprocated by the other side: Just as we abandon calls for regime change in Tehran and recognize a legitimate Iranian role in the region, Iran's leaders must moderate their behavior and that of their proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas," said Kerry, who currently chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Kerry said his panel would release a report this week on Iran's nuclear issue, which would underline the need for diplomacy backed by the threat of tougher sanctions.
Former top US negotiator, Nicholas Burns, backed Kerry's remarks, saying that decades-long attempts to isolate Iran and topple the Tehran government had "not worked".
"I think it would be helpful if the American administration was to say overtly and clearly that [regime change] is not our policy," said Burns, who served as the number three official in the US State Department under the Bush administration.
He, however, warned that Iran should expect harsher sanctions, if it goes on with its uranium enrichment activities.
Israel and its Western allies accuse Tehran of developing nuclear weapons -- a charge rejected by Iran.
Burns rejected the notion of a military attack on Iran, saying that Washington has learned the hard way that war has "unintended consequences".
"We learned in Iraq that sometimes when you start a war you don't know where it's going to end, and that's certainly the case with Iran," he said.
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Posted by: Fred ||
05/07/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
I wonder who would be supplying Iranian militants with things like EFPs if the US went in for round 2.
#3
Burns is showing his true colors. I wonder if Manhattan DA Morgenthau's testimony to Congress yesterday will get their attention. He has uncovered a "stripping" scheme for Iranian banks to hide transactions using British and US banks and told them they have seriously underestimated Iran's "deadly serious" threat to the US. Also indicted a Chinese businessman for supplying dual use tech for their nuclear program. He has jurisdiction because as long as the dollar remains the standard currency, all transactions pass through NY. Probably why they all want to move to a global currency, btw.
#4
"We're going to stop fighting you, so you have to stop fighting us! Ow! Quit hitting us! Ow! Ow! Can't you see I'm not fighting...Ow! Cut it out! Ow! Hey, no fair! Ow! Stop doing that...Ow! Hey, we're offering to stop...Ow! C'mon, pretty please? Ow! Ow! Ow!," etc., ad nauseum.
#5
Our government has gone French. Next thing will be a white flag over the capitol...
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
05/07/2009 12:33 Comments ||
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#6
Burns rejected the notion of a military attack on Iran, saying that Washington has learned the hard way that war has "unintended consequences".
Instapundit now advises Israel to go rogue, as under President Obama the U.S. is more generous to enemies than allies. Others now suggest Israel inform of decisions being acted upon, rather than ask permission.
#9
As Pakistan army is the main problem/obstacle in South Asian peace likewise the Iran Mullahs/Govt are the main problem/obstacle in Middle East peace!!!
[Beirut Daily Star: Region] Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad slammed Zionism as "occupation" and "aggression" Tuesday as he delivered his latest diatribe against Israel on a visit to key Middle East ally Syria. "The Zionist occupiers are destructive microbes, because Zionism itself is occupation, aggression, the use of assassination and annihilation," he told a joint news conference with President Bashar Assad in the Syrian capital.
"Zionism was created to threaten us. To support the Palestinian resistance is a humanitarian and popular obligation," Ahmadinejad said in remarks in Farsi that were translated into Arabic.
"Syria and Iran are united in supporting the Palestinian resistance," Ahmaadinejad said.
Ahmadinejad asked why it is the Islamist Hamas movement which controls Gaza that is blacklisted by the European Union and the United States, and not Israel after its devastating war on the territory at the turn of the year.
"They've attacked Gaza, killing people in their own land and massacring women and children ... and yet it's the Palestinians they accuse of terrorism," he complained.
Ahmadinejad also hit out at the continuing US military presence on Iran's borders.
"They weren't invited in. They're unwelcome visitors who should leave Afghanistan and the borders of Pakistan," the Iranian president said. "We don't want honey from bees that sting us. Efforts must be made to rid the region of the presence of foreigners ... and to reform the unjust global political and economic system."
Ahmadinejad said that Iran and Syria were standing together to "resist foreign intervention and the major powers trying to impose their hegemony over the region."
The United States "has put pressure on Syria and Iran, but it needs us and wants to develop relations," he said. "Circumstances are changing rapidly in our favor. We are on the road to victory."
Assad in turn hailed what he called the "natural" strategic alliance between Syria and Iran, which he said was "built on shared principles and interests."
"We agreed to support reconciliation in Iraq and look forward to the departure of the last foreign soldier," he added.
The United States and its key regional ally Israel have long sought to sour the three-decade-old alliance between Iran and Syria, which are the main foreign backers of the Lebanese group Hizbullah as well as Hamas.
The Obama administration has stepped up US contacts with Damascus and the acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs Jeffrey Feltman is due to leave for the Syrian capital on Wednesday on his second visit this year. In March, he made the first high-level US trip to Syria since 2005.
But on Monday, Washington baulked at calls by the Syrian president for it to open talks with Hamas and Hizbullah, saying the two groups had to renounce violence first.
"We would like to see Syria change the behavior of these two groups," State Department spokesman Robert Wood said.
Ahmadinejad was also due to meet exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal during his Damascus visit.
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Posted by: Fred ||
05/07/2009 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
