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Edited on Fri Jun-22-07 12:29 PM by Progressive_In_NC
I'm glad they stopped this crap in the US and I hate the death penalty but I will say one thing. Iran will whack a 15 year old for "moral offenses". The US would give the offender every chance to appeal til their heart's desire, and 10 years in most cases before anything happens.
Take an honest look at how this thing goes down (plus the fact that US has stopped this practice in 2005 and Iran continues today).
Look at the examples below (The Iranian ones are on down). In the US examples, one guy killed three of his cousins and stole the wheels off their car. another guy put two people in the trunk of a car and lit it on fire burning them alive. Some of the Iranian ones were executed for following Ba'hai or having bad literature.
US OFFENDERS ==========================================================
•Jay Pinkerton: Convicted of two stabbing murders in Amarillo, both occurring during unrelated robberies. The first victim was Sarah Lawrence, 30; the second was Sherry Welch, 23. Both women were raped. Executed May 1986.
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Johnny Garrett: Convicted in the 1981 rape, strangulation and stabbing of Sister Tadea Benz, a 76-year-old nun, in Amarillo. Executed February 1992.
------------------------------------------------------------ Toronto Patterson (executed at 25)
Toronto Patterson -- who had no criminal record and who was just 17 years old at the time of his offense -- is now scheduled for execution in Texas on August 28, 2002. He was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of three of his cousins in Dallas, Texas.
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Scott Allen Hain (executed at 32)
Laura Lee Sanders and Michael Houghton were seated in Sanders' car outside a Tulsa bar when they were approached by Scott Allen Hain and Robert Wayne Lambert. Hain and Lambert were in the parking lot, waiting to rob a nearby house when they saw Sanders and Houghton talking in the car. Appellant and Lambert forced their way into the car by threatening Houghton with a knife. Hain drove the car away from the bar, then stopped and robbed Houghton at gunpoint. When Houghton resisted the robbery, Hain forced him into the trunk of the car. A short while later, Hain and Lambert stopped and put Sanders in the trunk as well. The two men went back and drove away Houghton's car and stopped after driving down a rural roadway. The two men took Sanders' belongings, cut the gas line to the car and set it on fire. Houghton and Sanders were banging on the trunk and yelling. Hain and Lambert left the area, but returned a short time later to see if the fire was burning well. Hains was the 22nd murderer executed in the United States since 1976 for a murder committed when they were younger than 18 years old. Lambert remains on death row awaiting execution.
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Iranian Offenders
====================================================================== Saeed Kamberzai (m)
Saeed Kamberzai was executed on May 28, 2007, and was 17 years old at the time of the execution. Saeed, together with six other men, confessed on Iranian television of being involved in a number of crimes which allegedly took place in the Sistan-Baluchistan province, including attacks and carjackings. According to Amnesty International, there are uncomfirmed reports that these men were tortured into giving these confessions.
Information provided to Amnesty International suggested that Saeed and the other men could have been arrested because of family ties with those suspected of having been involved in blowing up a bus carrying security officials from the Revolutionary Guard on 14 February 2007, in which at least 14 people were killed.
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Mohammad Mousavi (m)
Mohammad Mousavi was executed on April 22, 2007 in the city of Shiraz. He was prisoner #13 on the Stop Child Executions petition. Mohammad was 19 years old and was sentenced to death for a murder allegedly committed when he was 16.
Mohammad was initially assigned a court appointed attorney but after saving some money, his mother contacted Nasrin Sotoudeh who is an Iranian attorney specialized in juvenile cases. Mrs. Sotoudeh represents other minors facing execution in Iran. Sina Paymard is one of them.
Soon after Mohammad Mousavi's mother hired her own attorney, she was contacted by Mr. Marvi, an official of Iran's judiciary in the central city of Shiraz where they reside. Mr. Marvi told Ms. Mousavi not to publicize her son's execution verdict and to fire her new attorney and in return he promised that Mohammad would not be executed because he was only 16 at the time of the alleged crime. Relying on the Iranian official's promise, the desperate mother told the new attorney not to proceed with defending her son. She also avoided talking to media or human right advocates about her son's situation.
On April 22, 2007 she was contacted by the Iranian authorities, But what she heard was not the promised news of commuting of her son's death penalty. Instead she was told: "Your son was executed this morning, please make necessary arrangements to collect his body".
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Atefeh Rajabi (f)
Atefeh Rajabi was a sixteen year-old Iranian girl who was executed in Iran after being sentenced to death by an Iranian judge, Haji Rezaii, for allegedly having committed "acts incompatible with chastity" (having sexual intercourse with an older man), and for removing her hijab while arguing with her judge in court. Atefeh reportedly had no access to legal counsel during the trial and was allegedly not believed to be mentally competent. Her death sentence was upheld by a Supreme Court of conservative mullahs.
Haji Rezaii, the religious judge, was reportedly so incensed with Atefeh’s "sharp tongue" during the trial that he traveled to Tehran to convince the mullahs of the Supreme Court to uphold the death sentence. She was publicly hanged in Neka, Iran, in August 2004, by the judge himself. Her body was left hanging for some time so people could see what happened to teenagers who committed acts incompatible with chastity. Amnesty International, as well as human rights organizations from the international community at large, declared the execution to be a crime against humanity and against children of the world.
Atefeh's body was allegedly removed from the grave soon after the burial by unknown perpetrators.
BBC2 showed a documentary about the execution of Atefeh, called "Execution of a teenage girl." It can be viewed here. (Also on our Multimedia page)The Guardian has published an article about the making of the documentary, written by the director.
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Mona Mahmudnizhad (f)
16 year old Mona were together with 9 other Bahai women executed in June 1983. The primary charge against her was teaching Bahá’í children’s classes. Because her youth and conspicuous innocence became a symbol of the group in prison, she was lashed on the soles of her feet with a cable and forced to walk on bleeding feet. On the day of the execution she asked to be the last in line to be executed so she could pray for the others. All she had to do to avoid execution was to denounce her faith but she refused, and instead when it was her turn, she kissed the rope and put it around her own neck.
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Dina Parnabi (f)
Dina Parnabi was an Iranian high school student, accused of smuggling forbidden literature and criticising the regime in her talks with her classmates. She was hanged on the 10th of July 1984 in a Teheran prison. The hanging was done in private and after the execution was over, her body was stripped, washed and delivered for dissection at medical school. In Iran, female bodies delivered for medical studies often show the rope or cable burns around their necks, indicating that they were all executed by hanging.
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