OMEN
05-12-2008, 08:00 PM
Iran hanged five men accused of raping, stabbing and then burning a woman, killing her a week before she was due to get married, a government newspaper said.
The five men aged 19 to 24 were executed in a prison in the city of Qom, southwest of the capital Tehran, on Sunday, the Iran daily said.
It said one of them had confessed to the crime, saying the woman was kidnapped after stepping out of a bus on her way home in August last year, then molested and stabbed before being doused with gasoline and set on fire.
"In order to make sure her body would not be identifiable, while she was still alive, we burnt her after soaking her with gasoline," Iran quoted the unnamed man as telling police.
Murder, adultery, rape, armed robbery, apostasy and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Iran's sharia, practiced since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
European governments and Western rights groups have criticised Iran for an increasing number of hangings since the authorities launched a clampdown on "immoral behaviour" in July last year.
Amnesty International in April listed the Islamic state as the world's second most prolific executioner in 2007, after China. It said in a report Iran had executed at least 317 people last year compared with at least 470 in China.
Reuters
The five men aged 19 to 24 were executed in a prison in the city of Qom, southwest of the capital Tehran, on Sunday, the Iran daily said.
It said one of them had confessed to the crime, saying the woman was kidnapped after stepping out of a bus on her way home in August last year, then molested and stabbed before being doused with gasoline and set on fire.
"In order to make sure her body would not be identifiable, while she was still alive, we burnt her after soaking her with gasoline," Iran quoted the unnamed man as telling police.
Murder, adultery, rape, armed robbery, apostasy and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Iran's sharia, practiced since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
European governments and Western rights groups have criticised Iran for an increasing number of hangings since the authorities launched a clampdown on "immoral behaviour" in July last year.
Amnesty International in April listed the Islamic state as the world's second most prolific executioner in 2007, after China. It said in a report Iran had executed at least 317 people last year compared with at least 470 in China.
Reuters