Posted on 07/23/2007 7:47:49 AM PDT by knighthawk
Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Jul. 22 - Iranian authorities hanged 12 people in Tehran on Sunday, the state broadcasting corporation IRIB reported on its website.
Tehran’s chief prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi announced that the 12 unnamed individuals were hanged earlier in the day.
He said their charges included kidnapping and drug trafficking.
Four other individuals were hanged in Tehran last week on similar charges, he added.
Iranian authorities routinely execute dissidents on bogus charges such as armed robbery and drug smuggling.
Ping
These charges hardly seem bogus to me. The US, supposedly, can execute people for drug smuggling, after all. As for armed robbery, that's just a question of where to draw the line.
Not that I am defending Iran. They will also execute people for adultery or what they define as public lewdness.
This is the kind of enlightenment the socialist Democrats hope to bring to the U.S.
Maybe, we could clean out our death rows (and life sentences) and send them to Iran for their viewing pleasure.
Nifong would have an excellent career in Iran.
Let’s see, during its summers Americans go to Baseball games,
the Beach, maybe do a little bar-b-que.
In Iran they go to hangings of the innocents.
And our M.S.M still bemoans us and says we here are the bad guys.
Here, people are routinely executed for the crime of having a bad defense team. As Klaus Von Bulow pointed out, if he’d been some working stiff, he’d be spending life behind bars. Instead, he hired Alan Dershowitz, got his conviction overturned, and now resides in London.
How do you know these people actually did what they were "charged" with ? You believe the Iranian govt..the govt that shuts down opposing TV stations ?
As I said before, I will not defend Iran. Their justice system is a joke with a really bad punch line. But there is nothing inherent about the change of drug smuggling or armed robbery that makes them bogus. Both are serious crimes and punishable by severe penalties, almost everywhere in the World.
That said, I don't trust Iran to apply these law with anything approaching justice.
But the thing is, there’s no visibility or oversight of the Iranian justice system, nor are there (I believe) public trials. So you’re taking them at their word with regards to the crimes committed by the executed.
Are they going to hang 12 people this Sunday or did they hang 12 people last Sunday?
The headline says the former, the first sentence in the article says the latter.
The point you’re missing, is that people who are arrested for much lesser offenses, (like planning protests) are later executed and labeled as murderers, rapists or drug smugglers.
I agree with you both completely. The Iranian justice system does not deserve to be called a justice system at all. It is just the strong arm of the state.
Individual charges of armed robbery and drug smuggling can be bogus, and no doubt they often are in Iran, and no doubt the falsely accused are often executed. I do not defend that.
The article is saying that there is no truth at all to the charges. They are really just dissidents and the state hangs a convenient death-penalty charge on them.
This is the same thing the Soviets did. Arrest dissenters on false charges, maybe even have a show trial, then send them to the Gulag to die. It is what totalitarian states do when they still care about appearances. The next step is Saddam-style round-ups of undesirables and firing squads over mass graves.
Yep, the term, “Islamic justice” is the biggest oxymoron there is.
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