Iran To Defy West By Executing Sex Offenders

Iran to defy west by executing sex offenders

http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2123914,00.html

Robert Tait in Tehran
Wednesday July 11, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Iran is to defy western criticism over its human rights record by executing 20 sex offenders and violent criminals days after a convicted adulterer was stoned to death.

Alireza Jamshidi, spokesman for the judiciary department, said 20 "thugs convicted of rape, sodomy and assault and battery" would be hanged in the coming days once prosecutors had decided whether to execute them in public.

The condemned include at least 15 detained in May during a so-called "public morals" crackdown in poorer neighbourhoods of Tehran and other cities. Iran drew international condemnation following the internet distribution of photos showing some of the arrested being publicly paraded with toilet hygiene implements hung around their necks and bearing signs of having suffered severe beatings.

The anticipated executions are certain to intensify international pressure on Iran after the UN's human rights high commissioner, Louise Arbour, this week condemned the stoning last Thursday of Jafar Kiani in a village 130 miles north-west of Tehran.

The punishment — carried out by several police officers and a judge — was an apparent snub to the judiciary chief, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, who ordered the suspension of the stoning verdicts against Mr Kiani and his partner, Mokarameh Ebrahimi, last month following protests from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Stoning sentences — the standard punishment for adultery under Iran's Islamic law — have rarely been implemented since Mr Shahroudi ordered a moratorium in 2002.

But Mr Jamshidi suggested Mr Kiani's sentence had been upheld on the order of higher authorities to send a signal to the west. "We are not obeying pressure from human rights groups. We are obeying religious regulations and our own laws," he told Iranian journalists.

"Changing orders due to international pressure might not be very good for expediency. It is not the judge who recognises expediency — recognition of the national interest takes place elsewhere."

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has vowed to resist western pressure on human rights, arguing that it is designed to overthrow Iran's Islamic system.

Iran this week announced it had launched new investigations into two detained Iranian-born US academics in open defiance of calls from the Bush administration for their release.

Haleh Esfandiari and Ali Tajbakhsh are already charged with spying offences and trying to foment a US-backed "velvet revolution."