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The Times
By Our Foreign Staff
IRAN has publicly hanged two male teenagers
convicted of raping a 13-year-old boy at knifepoint. After the Supreme
Court upheld the verdict of child rape, they were executed on Tuesday in Edalat (Justice) Square in the city of Mashhad.
The British gay rights group Outrage! has accused Iran of torturing the two into
confessing that they had homosexual sex. It believes that the assault
charges were a smokescreen to justify killing homosexuals.
Pictures of the hangings, on the ISNA student news agency website, showed
the terrified young men crying as they were interviewed by state media in a
lorry on the way to the gallows. Another picture showed hangmen in balaclavas
tightening the nooses around their necks.
Iran’s religiously conservative judiciary
decided that the pair had raped the 13-year-old at knifepoint while he was
out cycling in the northeast province of Khorassan. The young men’s ages were not
released but Ruhollah Rezazadeh,
the lawyer for one of them, told ISNA that he was under 18, yet the
judiciary had refused to spare him for being too young. The other accused
was said to be 18 years old.
Iranian newspapers reported that the two were also given more than 200
lashes for theft and drinking alcohol. The press carried conflicting
reports about the fate of three other men accused of involvement in the
sexual assault. Qods newspaper said that they
were still on the run, although the Mardomsalari
daily reported that they had been jailed.
Mr Rezazadeh defended
the two, saying they had not understood that gay relations and drinking
were forbidden. Homosexuality is a crime in Iran, but the death penalty is
normally reserved for murder, rape, armed robbery, adultery, drug
trafficking and apostasy.
Many newspapers said that the pair were originally
from the restive southwest province of Khuzestan, home to Iran’s Arab minority and the lion’s
share of the Islamic republic’s oil wealth.
Peter Tatchell, an Outrage! spokesman,
said that Britain should reconsider its relations
with Iran because of its victimisation of homosexuals. “We urge the
international community to treat Iran as a pariah state, break off
diplomatic relations and impose trade sanctions,” he said.
Britain follows a policy of constructive
engagement with Iran, alongside France and Germany, mainly directed at resolving
an international dispute over whether Tehran is seeking nuclear arms.
The European Union has been pursuing a human rights dialogue with Iran, but last year the American
pressure group Human Rights Watch said that abuses had risen
since 2000.
Amnesty International said that Iran executed 159 people last year,
a figure exceeded only by China. Under Iran’s religious law, the age of
criminal culpability is defined as puberty, which most judges put at 15 for
boys and nine for girls.
Iran has already drawn fire from international
rights groups for executing minors. Last summer a 16-year-old girl, Atefeh Rajabi, was hanged in
the Caspian port of Neka for sex before marriage. Medical
reports, not allowed in court, had suggested that she was mentally ill.
The clerical judiciary has repeatedly said that it is preparing to overhaul
its approach to juvenile crime and would institute a minimum age of 18 for
long prison or death sentences. But human rights lawyers are not convinced
that the reforms will be implemented soon.
CHILD DEATHS
Since 1990 11 child offenders reported executed
Jan 2004 Mohammad Mohammadzadeh, 21,
executed for an alleged murder
June 2004 Ali, 16, sentenced to die for killing fellow high school
student
Aug 2004 Atefeh Rajabi,
16, hanged for sex before marriage
Nov 2004 Vahid, 16, sentenced to death for
murder of a friend said to have tried to abuse him
Jan 2005 30 under 18 detained and thought to be facing death
sentence
Source: Amnesty International
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