On February 13, 2014, Iranian authorities sponsored a public execution in Kozehgari Square of Shiraz. The prisoners, Rahim Esfandiari Bay, 36, and Mohammad Darvish, 37, were convicted of some of the most severe crimes: murder and rape. Their sentences of execution were carried out via hanging in the public square.
According to Fars, the Iranian state news agency, one of the men had kidnapped, raped, and murdered an 8-year-old child, while the other had been convicted of rape in several instances. Due to the murky, secretive world of Iranian criminal justice, additional information was not able to be gathered.
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the spokesman for Iran Human Rights, has called for international intervention in such barbaric actions. He, as other Prison Law Blog readers surely do, too, objects to the idea of publicly executing people in the streets, even more so in front of small children. While the Prison Law Blog objects to capital punishment based on principle alone, we find it dually offensive for such events to be engaged in the public square, with children watching. This is clearly an attempt at indoctrination and should not be tolerated by the international courts or courts of public opinion.
For more information concerning Iranian criminal justice activities, visit.
Published Mar 5, 2014 by Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA | Last Updated by Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA on Jul 13, 2024 at 3:16 pm