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Iran Focus
 Tehran, Iran,
Dec. 27 – Iran’s
State Supreme Court upheld stoning and amputation sentences for four men
and jail terms for several dozen other members of a gang in the north of
the country, according to a report in a semi-official daily.
The men, who had been arrested in January in the town of Nowshahr in the northern province of Mazandaran,
were all part of a gang called the “Wild West”, the hard-line daily Jomhouri Islami reported in
its Sunday edition.
Three of the men – Eskandar M. (also known as Abbasi), Jamshid E., and his
unnamed brother – were each given two death by hanging sentences and one
death by stoning sentence.
Another man, identified only as Afshin R., was
sentenced to have his fingers amputated and receive prison time.
Abbasi’s brother, son, and father were sentenced
to five, seven, and one year in prison respectively.
Altogether, some 40 members of the gang were sentenced from one to 15 years
prison time.
The report quoted the top religious judge from the town of Sari, Hojjatoleslam
Moussavi, as saying that the State Supreme Court
had upheld all the sentences and that they were all “definite”.
The men were accused of armed robbery and murder among other charges.
Earlier this month, an Islamic court in Tehran
sentenced a woman to stoning for adultery in the town of Varamin.
Iran’s
Islamic Penal Code is very specific about the manner of execution and types
of stones which should be used for stoning sentences. Article 102 states
that men will be buried up to their waists and women up to their breasts
for the purpose of execution by stoning. Article 104 states, with reference
to the penalty for adultery, that the stones used should “not be large
enough to kill the person by one or two strikes, nor should they be so
small that they could not be defined as stones”.
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