Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Persian bloggers report girl's execution for "acts incompatible with chastity"
Iranian blogs are talking about reports that 16-year-old girl Atefe Rajabi (alternately reported "Ateqeh Rajabi," or "Atefeh Sahaleh") was publicly executed on August 15 by a Sharia court in the Iranian town of Neka. She was reportedly hanged in the street for having engaged "in acts incompatible with chastity." An Amnesty International statement condemning the reported execution is here, and says that interviews with townspeople indicate the child was developmentally disabled or suffering from a psychiatric illness. AI also says she would be the tenth minor to have been publicly executed in Iran since 1990.
Some Persian bloggers were lamenting the fact that conventional media appeared to be ignoring the story until today, though the execution took place ten days ago. But others, including Hossein Derakshan, questioned whether or not the blogged reports were reliable since "no reliable local or national news outlets had confirmed it" (Here is Hoder's Farsi post to that effect). Stories about the reported execution are coming out now AFP, UPI, Chicago Sun Times, and other news organizations. But all of the English-language news pieces I've found use the AI report as a sole source of facts around the case -- and the AI report in turn appears to rely solely on an item that appeared on Iranian website Peyk-e Iran. The facts seem hazy, all around -- but the story is deeply disturbing. Here's an excerpt from an unconfirmed English translation of one Farsi-language report; it appeared August 19 on an Iranian activist message board:
The execution was carried out by the order of Neka's "judicial administrator" and was approved by both the Supreme Court of the Islamic Republic and the chief of the nation's "judiciary branch." Although according to her birth certificate she was only 16 years old, the local court falsely claimed that she was 22.So what really happened here? Link to English language message-board post. Link to news story in Farsi. Link to National Business Review story, New Zealand. Farsi-speaking blogger Isabelle posts about this in French here. (Thanks, Jean-Luc Raymond)Three months ago, during her appearance before the local court, fiercely angry the young girl hurled insults at the local judge, Haji Reza, who is also the chief judicial administrator of the city, and it is said as another expression of protest took off some of her clothes in the courtroom. This act by the young girl made the administrator so furious that he evaluated her file personally and in less than three months received a go-ahead from the Islamic Republic's Supreme Court for her execution. The animosity and anger of Haji Reza was so strong that he personally put the rope around the girl's delicate neck and personally gave the signal to the crane operator, by raising his hand, to begin pulling the rope.
It may be noted that although according to the Islamic Republic's own penal laws the presence of an attorney for the defense [is supposed to be] mandatory, regardless of the defendant's ability to afford one, nevertheless the girl remained without an attorney. Her unfortunate father, while tears poured from his eyes, went about the city beseeching the townspeople for money to hire an attorney who in the least would provide his daughter with a line of defense.
posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:28:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments
