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Iran hanged in public seven people convicted of rape and kidnapping in its holy second city of Mashhad on Wednesday, the latest execution of criminals arrested in a crackdown on thugs.The hangings were carried out in two separate locations in Iran’s second city in the northeast, on the exact spots where they had committed their crimes, the state-run IRNA agency reported.Mashhad’s chief prosecutor Gholam Hossein Esmaeeli said five criminals were hanged in one execution and two in the other.

“The group of five were convicted of rape, kidnapping, theft and committing indecent acts,” he said.

“The other two were young males aged 24 and had abducted a woman two years ago where, after stealing her belongings, they raped her,” he added.

State television showed the convicts — blindfolded and dressed in short-sleeved shirts and tracksuit trousers — hanging limply from the nooses after they were executed.

“Implementing Justice Equals Elevating Security,” read a banner from Mashhad’s revolutionary and public prosecution office placed above the gallows.

It appeared that thousands of people had turned out in Mashhad, the home of the shrine of the Shiite Iman Reza, to witness the executions, and they were kept back by iron fencing and a cordon of police.

All the convicts had been arrested in a recent sweep on “arazel va obash,” a Persian phrase that translates loosely as “thugs” and is used to describe rapists, drug-traffickers and criminals guilty of disturbing public security.

Iran has stepped up hangings of such convicts deemed to be a public menace in a clear message that there is no mercy for such criminals.

One week before, 12 convicts arrested in the same crackdown on thugs were hanged simultaneously in Tehran’s Evin prison. It is highly unusual in Iran for so many people to be hanged at once.

Tehran chief prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi has said he is looking for execution verdicts for 17 other criminals.

Meanwhile, two convicted bandits were hanged on Wednesday in jail in Zahedan, the provincial capital of the Sistan Baluchestan province which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“They were convicted of being enemies of God and propagating immorality on earth by shooting police, which resulted in the martyrdom of two police,” a local judiciary spokesman was quoted as saying by the state broadcasting website.

Another man, identified as Ramin, was hanged on Wednesday in the southern city of Shiraz for murdering someone who intervened to break up a quarrel, IRNA reported.

The hangings brought to at least 149 the number of executions carried out in the Islamic republic so far this year, most of them by hanging and often in public.

At least 177 people were executed in 2006, according to Amnesty International, making Iran the most prolific applier of the death penalty in the world after China.

Capital offences in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, apostasy, blasphemy, serious drug trafficking, pederasty, adultery or prostitution, treason and espionage.

Amnesty Internation is reporting Ahmad Qasaban, Majid Tavakkoli and Ehsan Mansouri have reportedly begun a hunger strike in protest at their continuing detention. They are reportedly being subjected to torture. The families of the three remaining detained students have reportedly been able to visit them twice since their arrest.

On 24 July the families wrote an open letter to the Head of the Judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, in which they describe publicly for the first time the torture and ill-treatment of the students. The three students reportedly told their families that seven of their interrogators simultaneously had beaten them severely with cables and whips. Their interrogation sessions sometimes lasted up to 24 hours or would take place in the middle of the night. They were kicked in the arms, chest and back and punched in the face and on the head, so that they fell off their chairs and were then thrown against the walls. They have been forced to remain standing for up to 48 hours and forced to stand on one leg for up to 18 hours.

They have been prevented from receiving medical care. Interrogators also told them, falsely, that members of their families had been arrested, beaten or harassed, or were ill. The families had previously written three times to Ayatollah Shahroudi expressing concern that their children were being physically and psychologically ill-treated to make them confess to crimes they had not committed, and asking him to take action to halt this. Abbas Hakimzadeh and Ali Saberi, who are six months from finishing their studies at Amir Kabir University in Tehran, have reportedly been suspended for two terms and banned from entering university premises. BACKGROUND INFORMATION The crisis at Amir Kabir University started on 30 April 2007 with the publication of student newsletters carrying articles which university officials deemed insulting to Islam.

These newsletters, bearing the names and logos of four student publications, were distributed throughout the campus. They contained three controversial articles and two caricatures which could have been perceived as critical of the Iranian regime and insulting to Islam. Distribution of the publications took place one week before the annual elections to a student union, the Islamic Students’ Association (ISA). One article questioned the infallibility of the Prophet Mohammad, the first Shi’ a Imam, Ali and the place of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Another criticised the government’s crackdown on women’s clothing, and a third ridiculed Islamic women’s attire.

For more than 27 years, America and Iran have rarely seen eye-to-eye on anything. So, how is it that these archrivals have a similar position, albeit for very different reasons, on a key women’s rights convention? Iran and the US are two of only eight countries that have not joined the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw).

Supporters call Cedaw an international “bill of rights” for women. “This treaty deals with the most basic rights for women and girls, including access to basic medical care, legal redress against violence, and access to education,” says Sarah Albert, co-chair of the Working Group for Ratification of Cedaw. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women is meeting until 10 August at UN headquarters in New York to review reports on the situation of women in 15 of the 185 countries that are party to the convention. Under Iran’s previous president, Mohammad Khatami, the parliament passed a bill in favour of joining Cedaw. But it was vetoed by Iran’s powerful Guardian Council, an appointed body of six clerics and six jurists. The Council stated that the bill contradicted Islamic principles. Of course, the US does not have a Guardian Council but its system of checks and balances can lead to long delays in implementing policy.

Incompatible

Former US President Jimmy Carter signed the Convention in 1980, but the Senate has yet to ratify it. In 1994, a group of senators blocked its passage. Despite a 2002 attempt to revive it, the convention remains stalled in the Senate. America is the only Western industrial democracy that has not ratified Cedaw. “The opposition to the treaty is small but very vocal. It surrounds the issue of sovereignty. Opponents have argued that the US Constitution would be usurped if we were to ratify it,” says Ms Albert. Iran’s opposition to Cedaw has deeper roots. Mehrangiz Kar, an Iranian human rights lawyer based at Harvard, says that the Iranian legal system is inherently incompatible with Cedaw. “The Iranian government is based upon Islam, and its constitution states that laws cannot contradict the Sharia. Given that the Sharia does not consider men and women’s rights as equal, its joining the Convention would be problematic.” But most Muslim nations have joined the Convention - even Saudi Arabia, whose constitution is the Koran and where women do not enjoy equality with men, has signed and ratified the Convention.

‘Utopian wish-list’

In both the US and Iran, female opponents of international agreements like Cedaw have similar arguments. Dr Janice Crouse of the conservative Beverly LaHaye Institute has called the treaty “a thinly disguised utopian wish-list”. The ratification of CEDAW is not a priority for the Bush administration “It is like the old colonialism. That has certainly been discredited in history, but here you have the UN taking up the same kinds of principles and saying to countries you have to do things my way. You have to do things in the way of Western nations,” Dr Crouse said in an interview posted on Concerned Women for America’s website. Conservatives like Dr Crouse also condemn Cedaw for loosening abortion regulations, although the State Department described the Convention as “abortion neutral.” Some high-ranking women within the Iranian government also reject treaties like Cedaw, which they see as a “failed Western model.” Zohreh Tabibzadeh Nouri, chief of Iran’s Centre for Women and Family Affairs, has said that Iran will not ratify Cedaw so long as she is in charge. Formerly known as the Centre for Women’s Affairs, it was renamed under the conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “The changing of the name illustrates the current government’s expectation that women’s principal role in society should be that of housewives and mothers,”" says Asiyeh Amini, journalist and women’s rights activist in Iran.

Influence

It is unlikely that the current governments in Tehran and Washington will ratify Cedaw. The Bush administration has been reviewing the treaty for a couple of years but it is not high on the treaty ratification priority list to be sent to the Senate. “At this time this administration is not seeking the ratification of any human rights treaty,” says Sarah Albert. Neither is the Iranian government. In fact, several women’s rights activists have received jail sentences and police have broken up their public gatherings in Tehran. Meanwhile in Washington, women’s political influence has never been stronger. A top presidential contender is a woman. The Speaker of the House is a woman, so is the Secretary of State. There is optimism among supporters that Cedaw could gain public support as candidates seek to attract women voters in the upcoming presidential campaigns.

Source: BBC News