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Iran to hang 30 convicts on Sunday TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Thirty people convicted of drug and other criminal charges will be hanged on Sunday, Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency reported Saturday. The 30 had their cases tried by the highest judicial authorities and were found guilty of the charges brought against them, Iran's judiciary said in a statement. The verdicts are final, and the sentences will be carried out Sunday, according to Fars. According to Amnesty International, Iran executed 317 people last year, second only to China's 470. The U.S. executed 42 people in 2007, according to Amnesty International....

The executions took place in the north-eastern city of Sabzeva, Reuters news agency reported. It was not revealed what crimes those executed had been accused of, nor how they were killed or when, but the radio report said they were "wicked people". On Saturday four others, convicted of murder, were publicly hanged in the southern province of Bushehr, an Iranian newspaper reported. Murder, rape, adultery, drug trafficking, armed robbery and apostasy - the abandoning of religious faith - all carry the death penalty under Iranian Sharia law. In January, Iran's judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi ordered that all public executions...

PARIS (AFP) - New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday. Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is "hanging by its last thread" to Charcot Island, one of the plate's key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release. "Since the connection to the island... helps stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf...

TOKYO (AFP) — Japan on Tuesday executed three people including notorious serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki, a fetishist convicted of murdering four little girls and eating some of their bodies, officials said. Miyazaki, 45, was nicknamed the "killer nerd" for his obsession with sexual cartoons and pornography. But defence lawyers contended he was mentally ill and could not be held fully responsible for his actions. Japan is the only major industrialised nation other than the United States to apply the death penalty and has been stepping up the pace of executions, which enjoy wide public support. "We are carrying out executions...

Japan hangs 3 convicted murderers By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press writer 9 minutes ago A serial killer who mutilated the bodies of four young girls and reportedly drank the blood of one of his victims was among three convicted murderers executed in Japan on Tuesday for crimes an official called indescribably cruel. Tsutomu Miyazaki, 45, whose rash of grisly killings in the late 1980s triggered calls for tighter restrictions on violent pornographic videos, was hanged at a detention center in Tokyo, Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama said. Miyazaki burned the body of one 4-year-old and left her bones on her parents'...

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran has hanged five men convicted of raping and murdering a young woman, a state-owned newspaper reported Monday. The men were convicted of kidnapping the woman, raping her and then dousing her with gasoline and burning her alive. The IRAN newspaper reported Monday that the crime was apparently in revenge for the woman's failure to marry one of the men. Her family opposed the union. The convicts, all aged 19 to 24, were executed Sunday in Qom prison some 84 miles south of Tehran.

Four death row prisoners have been executed in Japan, the authorities have announced. The four inmates, aged between 41 and 64, were hanged at separate locations in Japan, the justice ministry said. Japan, one of the few industrialised countries to retain the death penalty, appears to be stepping up the pace of prisoner executions. Three capital sentences were carried out in February, as well as nine executions in 2007. Human rights groups are critical of the secrecy surrounding executions in Japan. Relatives are told only after the hangings have taken place and, until December 2007, the names of those executed...

Iraq approves 'Chemical Ali' hanging   Iraq’s presidency council has cleared the way for the long-delayed execution of Saddam Hussein’s cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majeed, known as “Chemical Ali,” to be carried out…The execution of Majeed, once one of the most feared men in Iraq, and two others for the genocidal Anfal campaign against Iraq’s Kurds in the 1980s has been delayed for months by a legal wrangle over who has the authority to green light the hangings… No date has been set for the execution to be carried out, they said.   The council source said no decision had been made regarding...

TEHRAN — Iran on Sunday executed two men — one accused of murder and the other of raping children — in a prison in the northeastern province of Khorasan, the ISNA news agency reported. The men were not identified, but the news agency said that one of the men had raped several girls under the age of 10 and that the other man had committed murder. ...

A 10-year-old boy has hanged himself within days of talking to his mother about the recent spate of internet-related suicides in Bridgend. Cameron McWilliams had few friends and spent most of his spare time reading or playing on either an Xbox or a laptop computer. He had also told his mother, Kelly, that he was interested in wearing girls’ clothes and wanted one day to have a sex change. Mrs McWilliams, of Intake, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, found him with a belt around his neck on Monday. She told an inquest in the town that her son had been teased after...

Five Hanged in Evin January 30, 2008 AFP Tehran -- Iran hanged five convicted murderers in Tehran's Evin prison on Wednesday, the Fars news agency reported, as curbs were imposed on executions being carried out in public. A man identified only by his first name of Faraz was hanged for killing his girlfriend Andia in February 2004. "This morning Faraz begged Andia's father to forgive him, but the father reminded him of how he had murdered his daughter and refused to pardon him," Fars said in the report. Ramezan, 29, was executed for stabbing his brother's wife to death after...

Iran's Chief Judge Orders an End to Executions in Public January 30, 2008 The Associated Press Santa Barbara News-Press TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's chief judge has ordered that executions will no longer take place in public, the official IRNA news agency reported Wednesday. Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, a moderate conservative cleric, also banned publishing pictures and broadcasting video footage of executions, the report said. Executions can now only be carried out in public after special approval by the head of the judiciary, the report said. Since the start of this year, Iran has hanged more than 20 people convicted of...

Iran hangs 13 on single day: reports Wed Jan 2, 12:21 PM ET Iran hanged 13 convicted criminals on Wednesday, including the mother of two young children who had been found guilty of murdering her husband after discovering he was having an affair, reports said. Raheleh Zamani, who reportedly chopped her husband's body into pieces, was hanged alongside seven men convicted of murder, in a mass execution at Tehran's Evin prison, the Iranian Student Correspondents' Association (ISCA) reported. Three drug traffickers were also hanged on Wednesday in public in a square in the central city of Qom and another two...

Teenager Charged with Hanging 6-Year-Old Neighbor GirlLast Update: 1:04 pm CORSICANA, Texas (AP) -- A neighbor of a 6-year-old girl found hanged in her family's garage has been charged in the sexual assault and death of the first-grader, police said Friday. Shaun Earl Arender, 19, is charged with capital murder in the death of Hanna Mack, whose body was found hanging from the garage rafters before sunrise Sept. 10 by her mother. Arender lived less than a mile from the Mack's rural home about 65 miles south of Dallas, Navarro County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Mike Cox said. It wasn't immediately...

(CBS 11 News) NAVARRO COUNTY The Navarro County Sheriff’s Department arrested Kevin Anders for possession of child pornography. Anders is the live-in boyfriend of Dana Mack. Dana's youngest daughter, Hannah, was found dead in the family's garage Monday. Wednesday, police confirmed the girl was sexually assaulted before she was hanged. Police originally listed Anders as a person of interest in the death of the 6-year-old girl. Anders had been questioned by police early Wednesday, but was not arrested until sometime around 9 p.m.

Baghdad, Sept 7, (VOI) – Three of the six defendants in the Anfal case will be executed by hanging on Saturday, a Saudi newspaper quoted the lawyer of former Iraqi deputy premier Tareq Aziz as saying. "The Iraqi Criminal Court notified Ali Hassan al-Majid, alias Chemical Ali, former defense minister Sultan Hashim and former chief of staff Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti that they will be executed tomorrow," lawyer Badie Aref Ezzat told Saudi newspaper al-Watan, published on Friday. The lawyer said he was told by the three convicts that they only wanted to meet their families before the executions. Ezzat said...

BAGHDAD — Saddam Hussein's cousin and two other former regime officials were convicted Sunday of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to hang for the brutal crackdown that killed up to 180,000 Kurdish civilians and guerrillas two decades ago. Two other defendants were sentenced to life in prison for their roles in the 1987-1988 crackdown, known as "Operation Anfal." A sixth defendant was acquitted for lack of evidence. Death sentences are automatically appealed. The most notorious defendant was Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for ordering the use of mustard gas and nerve agents...

Three members of the former Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein -- including the man known as "Chemical Ali" -- will be executed within 30 days, senior appellate Judge Munir Haddad said Tuesday. The appellate chamber upheld their sentences of death by hanging, which were imposed in June. The three defendants are Hussein's first cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majeed, nicknamed "Chemical Ali;" Sultan Hashem Ahmed, military commander of the Anfal campaign; and Hussein Rashid Mohammed, deputy general commander of the Iraqi armed force, assistant chief of staff for military operations, and former Republican Guard commander.

Islamic Republic of Fear http://www.economist.com/world/africa/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=9687617 Iran Islamic Republic of Fear Aug 23rd 2007 From The Economist print edition Restoring the revolution, taking away civil liberties AP Iran makes a grotesque spectacle of itself Get article backgroundTHE head of Iran's judiciary is a confident man. Despite foreign attempts at slander, Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi Shahrudi recently declared, his country has presented a fine image to the world of Islamic law at work. If news were limited to such mercies as the recent release, on bail, of Haleh Esfandiari, a 67-year-old Iranian-American academic, after six months in jail on charges of espionage, or...

Stonings, hangings, floggings, purges. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might claim that United Nations sanctions can't hurt his country, but that is not how it feels for Iran's long-suffering population which now finds itself on the receiving end of one of the most brutal purges witnessed since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The most visible manifestation of the new oppression sweeping Iran has been the wave of public executions and floggings carried out in Teheran and provincial capitals over recent weeks in a blatant attempt by the regime to intimidate political opponents. The official government line is that the punishments are part of...

Iran has hanged up to 30 people in the past month amid a clampdown prompted by alleged US-backed plots to topple the regime, The Observer can reveal. Many executions have been carried out in public in an apparent bid to create a climate of intimidation while sending out uncompromising signals to the West. Opposition sources say at least three of the dead were political activists, contradicting government insistence that it is targeting 'thugs' and dangerous criminals. The executions have coincided with a crackdown on student activists and academics accused of trying to foment a 'soft revolution' with US support. The...

In Death, a Martyr's Smile Foretells Victory August 10, 2007 The Denver Post Opinion The world has seen nothing like it. When Majid Kavosifar was hanged in public in Tehran for killing criminal judge Hassan Moghadas, no one expected to see the expression they saw on his face the day of his execution. As Kavosifar was jostled through the crowd by the regime's demonic henchmen in ski masks - and even as he was hoisted onto the platform that he was to be hanged from - he wore a triumphant, almost joyful smile on his face. If there were ever...

Iran's Rulers Revel in Rough Justice Fear is Key to Clerical Regime August 03, 2007 Scotsman Michael Theodoulou Thousands of Iranians, including children, watched in fascination and horror yesterday as two men convicted of murdering a hardline judge were hanged in a Tehran street in defiance of Western criticism of Iran's human rights record. Dozens of people have been executed in recent weeks for rape, drug trafficking, murder and other offences but public executions are relatively rare and these were the first in the capital for five years. Majid Kavousifar and his nephew Hossein Kavousifar were jostled in handcuffs to...

Iran executes nine more criminals August 2007 Iran has hanged at least nine men convicted for rape, kidnapping and armed robbery, state media reported. Seven were hanged publicly in two separate locations in the north-eastern city of Mashhad, and two others were executed in south-east Iran. Rights groups say Iran has one of the highest rates of executions in the world and it is rising. Execution numbers doubled to 177 in 2006 and so far 143 have been executed in 2007, Amnesty International says. State media has reported that police recently arrested dozens of drug addicts, smugglers, rapists and murderers...

R obert Vinyard has been in jail and in prison for crimes related to stalking. Now he's in the state hospital for insane criminals. None of those institutions stopped him from stalking the woman he's hounded, harassed and threatened for nearly three decades. Vinyard, 52, has been stalking the same woman since 1979. They met while students at the University of Colorado. She befriended him because she felt sorry for him. They were never intimate partners. But he became obsessed with her. Two years ago, Vinyard was found by a judge to be not guilty by reason of insanity on...

A 25-year-old mother apparently hanged herself and three of her four young daughters in a closet in their mobile home. An 8-month-old girl survived and was taken to a hospital, the sheriff said Tuesday. The woman's sister, who lived in the same Oak Hills trailer park about 25 miles west of Fort Worth, forced her way into the locked mobile home after the woman failed to show up for work. Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler said the sister rescued the infant when she realized the baby girl was still alive. The mother was identified as Gilberta Estrada. The other children,...

Saddam's former deputy hanged in Iraq By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer 3 minutes ago BAGHDAD - The former deputy in Saddam Hussein's government was hanged before dawn Tuesday for the killings of 148 Shiites, an official with the prime minister's office said. Taha Yassin Ramadan, who was Saddam's vice president when the regime was ousted by the U.S.-led invasion that began four years ago Tuesday in Iraq, was the fourth man to be executed in the killings of 148 Shiites following a 1982 assassination attempt against the former leader in the town of Dujail north of Baghdad. The official,...

Jordan executes killers of U.S. envoy Two with ties to al Qaeda hanged for 2002 assassination (CNN) -- The Jordanian government Saturday executed two al Qaeda-linked terrorists convicted in the 2002 assassination of a U.S. diplomat, according to Jordan's Petra news agency. Salem Sa'ed Salem bin Suweid, a Libyan national, and Yasser Fathi Ibraheem, a Jordanian, were hanged at the Siwaqa Correctional and Rehabilitation Center for the killing of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley.

BALTIMORE -- A former university professor accused of working as a call girl hanged herself over the weekend, police said Monday. Brandy Britton, 43, was found dead at her home Saturday by a family member.

LONDON (AP)—There is nothing kind or gentle about a hanging. It is a process scientifically designed to break the neck and choke a person to death as efficiently as possible. In the recent Iraqi executions, former president Saddam Hussein and two of his accomplices, his half brother and the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, were hanged from a gallows. In such judicial hangings, the victims are typically dropped a distance greater than their height through a trapdoor. At this point, the rope becomes rigid, and the force of the noose should break the victim's neck, causing immediate paralysis and...

There is nothing kind or gentle about a hanging. It is a process scientifically designed to break the neck and choke a person to death as efficiently as possible. In the recent Iraqi executions, former president Saddam Hussein and two of his accomplices, his half brother and the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, were hanged from a gallows. In such judicial hangings, the victims are typically dropped a distance greater than their height through a trapdoor. At this point, the rope becomes rigid, and the force of the noose should break the victim's neck, causing immediate paralysis and unconsciousness....

A Connecticut toymaker is hoping to strike a chord with its "Dope on a Rope" doll, a figure depicting former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in his last moments, with a noose around his neck. This isn’t the first such undertaking for the company. Herobuilders.com also sells dolls depicting other famous personalities and events, such as Michael Jackson’s dangling his child over a balcony in Germany, as well as Usama bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il and Tony Blair. The Saddam doll depicts the full-bearded ex-leader wearing a white T-shirt with the words “Dope on a Rope” in red letters and a noose...

AIRO, Egypt - The boys' deaths — scattered in the United States, in Yemen, in Turkey and elsewhere in seemingly isolated horror — had one thing in common: They hanged themselves after watching televised images of Saddam Hussein's execution. Officials and relatives say the children appeared to be mimicking the former dictator's Dec. 30 hanging, shown both on a sanitized Iraqi government tape and explicit clandestine videos that popped up on Web sites and some TV channels. The leaked videos, apparently taken by cell phone cameras, set off international outrage over the raucous scene at Saddam's execution, but some experts...

In Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, a "committee of sappy women" petition the governor to pardon the murderous Injun Joe. "If he had been Satan himself,” Twain snorts, “there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a pardon petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently impaired and leaky waterworks." I thought of this passage as I read with disgust the international reaction to the hanging of Saddam Hussein. People who shrugged at Hussein’s torture, mutilation, murder, and genocide are now shocked, shocked that his victims sent him off to Hell with a few...

HOUSTON: A 10-year-old US boy who hanged himself may have been inspired to do it by television coverage of Saddam Hussein's execution. The deceased’s relatives told the police in Webster, Texas, that Sergio Pelico had seen the video of the former Iraqi leader's hanging and asked about it before the incident on Sunday. "We're theorising he tried to experiment or mimic the behaviour and it got out of control," Webster Police Capt. Thomas Claunch said. The boy apparently went to his room, attached a piece of clothing to a bunk bed and tied it around his neck, the police said....

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — The execution of Saddam Hussein was initially hailed as an example of democratic justice being served in Iraq, but leading members of Congress said Thursday that the conduct surrounding the hanging could undermine United States strategy in Iraq and complicate efforts to help the new Iraqi government succeed. The White House has declined to criticize the execution, portions of which were shown online in a bootlegged video. Several Republican senators who have been among President Bush’s biggest supporters in the Iraq war said they were troubled by the video and fearful of the reverberations it could...

WASHINGTON -- Of the 6 billion people on this earth, not one killed more people than Saddam Hussein. And not just killed, but tortured and mutilated -- doing so often with his own hands and for pleasure. It is quite a distinction to be the pre-eminent monster on the planet. If the death penalty was ever deserved, no one was more richly deserving than Saddam Hussein. For the Iraqi government to have botched both his trial and execution, therefore, and turned monster into victim, is not just a tragedy, but a crime -- against the new Iraq that Americans are...

A small Connecticut-based company Herobuilders, has produced a mail-order doll of late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's final minutes at the gallows. Despite having received a death threat on Thursday, Herobuilder's founder and owner, Emilio Vicale told Adnkronos International (AKI) he does not regret creating the doll or feel it is inappropriate. "What about Saddam's gassing of thousands of people - was that in good taste?" he asked, referring to Saddam's alleged responsibility for the gassing of 5,000 Kurds and poisoning of thousands more.

In what could very well turn out to be a case of shooting the messenger -- or something close to it -- a security guard who used his cell phone to produce the video of the execution of Saddam Hussein that was broadcast throughout the world has been arrested by Iraqi authorities. The Washington Post, which reported the arrest, identified its source as Sadiq al-Rikabi, the political adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who told the newspaper that the release of the footage was "not something proper or acceptable. ... We needed just a small piece [of footage] about the...

Kolkata, India - A 15-year-old girl from eastern India hanged herself in response to the execution of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, police and family members said on Thursday. "She said they had hanged a patriot. We didn't take her seriously when she told us that she wanted to feel the pain Saddam did during the execution," the girl's father, Manmohan Karmakar, told AFP by phone from the town of Kharda. He said his daughter, called Moon Moon, had become extremely depressed after watching Saddam's execution on television. "She kept watching the scene over and again and didn't take food on...

- Police and family members said a 10-year-old boy who died by hanging himself from a bunk bed was apparently mimicking the execution of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Sergio Pelico was found dead Sunday in his apartment bedroom, said Webster police Lt. Tom Claunch. Pelico's mother told police he had previously watched a news report on Saddam's death. "It appears to be accidental," Claunch said. "Our gut reaction is that he was experimenting."

The disgusting video of Saddam Hussein's last moments on the planet is more than a reminder of the inescapable barbarity of capital punishment and of the intelligible and conventional reasons why it should always be opposed. The zoolike scenes in that dank, filthy shed (it seems that those attending were not even asked to turn off their cell phones or forbidden to use them to record souvenir film) were more like a lynching than an execution. At one point, one of the attending magistrates can be heard appealing for decency and calm, but otherwise the fact must be faced: In...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The person believed to have recorded Saddam Hussein's raucous execution on a cell phone camera was arrested today, an adviser to Iraq's prime minister said. A U.S. military spokesman, meanwhile, said the United States would have handled the execution differently had it been in charge. The adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, did not identify the person. But he said it was "an official who supervised the execution" and who is "now under investigation." "In the past few hours, the government...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration sent conflicting signals Wednesday about the taunting and baiting that accompanied Saddam Hussein's execution, with the White House declining to join criticism of the procedure and the State Department and U.S. military raising questions about it. "The president is focused on the new way forward in Iraq so these issues are best addressed out of Iraq, out of Baghdad," deputy White House press secretary Scott Stanzel said. "Prime Minister Maliki's staff have already expressed their disappointment in the filmings, so I guess we'll leave it at that." Stanzel said the U.S. military and the...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A senior Iraqi court official nearly halted Saddam Hussein's execution when supporters of a radical Shi'ite cleric and militia leader taunted the former president as he stood on the gallows. Prosecutor Munkith al-Faroon, who is heard appealing for order on explicit Internet video of Saturday's hanging that has inflamed sectarian passions, said on Tuesday he threatened to leave if the jeering did not stop -- and that would have halted the execution as a prosecution observer must be present by law. "I threatened to leave," Faroon told Reuters. "They knew that if I left, the execution could...

(2007-01-02) — President George Bush today weighed in on the controversy over the treatment of Saddam Hussein in the final moments before the former Iraqi president’s hanging last Saturday. A cellphone video of the scene on YouTube.com, and elsewhere online, records several male voices in the death chamber shouting insults at the soon-to-be-late former dictator. Mr. Bush, who has previously hailed the execution of the tyrant as another step in Iraq’s march toward freedom, said today that perhaps those who insulted Mr. Hussein should have been “penalized for taunting.” “I think the ref should have thrown the flag,” said Mr....

Defiant to the end, Saddam Hussein mocked Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr moments before he was hanged, a witness said Saturday.

The Iraqi regime's decision to hang Saddam Hussein was defended by a Church of England bishop yesterday.The Bishop of Lichfield, the Rt Rev Jonathan Gledhill, said that anyone who deliberately murdered another human being "immediately forfeited his or her right to life". The bishop said that there were good reasons to oppose the death penalty but Saddam's execution could not be criticised as unjust because he had been afforded a fair trial and an opportunity to appeal. It would "be wrong to encourage Iraqi democracy on the one hand and to interfere with their government and legal system on the...

Should Saddam Hussein have been hanged? Yes No I don't know

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