Iran - a great cause for liberals

Iranmania and others tell us: Iran halts teenager's execution - that's the good news. 
 
LONDON, July 19 (IranMania) - Iran halted the execution of a teenager who murdered a drug dealer while still a minor, giving his family 10 days to reach a financial settlement with the victim's kin, his lawyer said, acording to an AFP report.

Sina Paymard, 19, who suffers from manic depression, was going to be hanged at dawn on Wednesday for murdering the 32-year-old man in a fight over drugs three years ago.
Paymard's case has drawn international attention not just over his age but also as he won a last-minute stay of execution in 2006 by moving the victim's family to tears with his flute playing seconds before he was due to be hanged.

Of course, if they can't raise the money, he gets hanged.

 

The articles states that donors have raise half the blood money. Half a blood money is NOT good enough. Iranian law is just:

 

The official blood money, cash paid out in the case of violent death, is set at 350 mln rials (37,600 dollars) for a man, and half that for a woman.

 

After all, men are worth more than women, right?

 

Here's how it works:

Under Iran's Islamic law, anybody who kills another person has to pay compensation to the victim's family who can refuse it and demand the murderer be executed.

This boy may escape by luck:

The teenager was to be hanged in September 2006, two weeks after he turned 18. But he asked as his last wish to play his Iranian flute (ney) before the executioners put the rope round his neck.
Touched by his playing, the victim's family agreed to demand financial compensation instead of the death penalty -- so long as Paymard could come up with the sum.

The boy is a great candidate for execuation:

... Paymard also suffered from "bipolar disorder", commonly known as manic depression, and complained that the court did not take his condition into account.

 

That was the good news. Here is the bad news:

Iran's conservative judiciary maintains that minors are not executed in the Islamic republic, but in some cases murderers have been hanged after reaching the age of 18.

In April, a man identified only as Mohammad was reportedly hanged in the southern city of Shiraz for murdering his friend when he was 16 years old.

A human rights group headed by Iranian Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi said in a recent report that 15 people were sentenced to death in Iran in the past two years for crimes they committed as minors, AFP added.

Another case that has drawn attention is Delara Darabi, a 20-year-old artist, sentenced to death for murdering a relative during a burglary she and a friend committed at the age of 17 in the northern city of Rasht.

She has been jailed for the past three years for the murder of her father's cousin, which she said to have initially claimed believing she would not be executed as a minor. Her death sentence has yet to be commuted.

Iran has executed at least 118 people so far this year according to an AFP tally based on media reports.

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

 

 

Good thing you are against capital punishment and those mean neocons like George Bush, right?

 

Ami Isseroff