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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran: ŽWoman and three men hangedŽ
2009-05-07
[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.
Posted by:Fred

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