Iran hangs youths for 'raping boy'

The Weekend Australian:

July 23, 2005

IRAN has publicly hanged two male teenagers convicted of raping a 13-year-old boy at knifepoint.They were executed on Tuesday in Edalat (Justice) Square in the city of Mashhad, 900km east of Tehran, after the Supreme Court upheld the verdict.

The British gay rights group Outrage! has accused Iran of torturing the two into confessing that they had homosexual sex. It believes that the assault charges were a smokescreen to justify killing homosexuals.

Pictures of the hangings, on the ISNA student news agency website, showed the terrified young men crying in a truck on the way to the gallows. Another picture showed hangmen in balaclavas tightening the nooses around their necks.

Iran's religiously conservative judiciary ruled that the pair raped the 13-year-old at knifepoint while he was out cycling.

The young men's ages were not released but the lawyer for one of them, Ruhollah Rezazadeh, told ISNA he was younger than 18. The other accused was said to be 18. Iranian newspapers reported that the two were also given more than 200 lashes for theft and drinking alcohol.

The press carried conflicting reports about the fate of three other men accused of involvement in the sexual assault.

Mr Rezazadeh defended the two men, saying they had not understood that gay relations and drinking were forbidden.

Homosexuality is a crime in Iran, but the death penalty is normally reserved for murder, rape, armed robbery, adultery, drug trafficking and apostasy.

Outrage! spokesman Peter Tatchell said Britain should reconsider its relations with Iran.

Britain follows a policy of constructive engagement with Iran, alongside France and Germany, mainly directed at resolving an international dispute over whether Tehran is seeking nuclear arms.

The European Union has been pursuing a human rights dialogue with Iran, but last year the US pressure group Human Rights Watch said the number of abuses had grown since 2000.

Amnesty International says Iran executed 159 people last year, a figure exceeded only by China. Under Iran's religious law, the age of criminal culpability is defined as puberty, which most judges put at 15 for boys and nine for girls.

Iran has already drawn fire from international rights groups for executing minors.

Last (northern) summer, a 16-year-old girl, Atefeh Rajabi, was hanged in the Caspian port of Neka for having sex before marriage.

The clerical judiciary has repeatedly said it is preparing to overhaul its approach to juvenile crime and will set a minimum age of 18 for death or long prison sentences. Human rights lawyers are not convinced.