[Marxism] "Iran exonerates six who killed in Islam's name'

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

New York Times
April 19, 2007
Iran Exonerates Six Who Killed in Islam's Name 
By NAZILA FATHI
TEHRAN, April 18 - The Iranian Supreme Court has overturned the murder
convictions of six members of a prestigious state militia who killed five
people they considered "morally corrupt."

The reversal, in an infamous five-year-old case from Kerman, in central
Iran, has produced anger and controversy, with lawyers calling it corrupt
and newspapers giving it prominence. 

"The psychological consequences of this case in the city have been great,
and a lot of people have lost their confidence in the judicial system,"
Nemat Ahmadi, a lawyer associated with the case, said in a telephone
interview. 

Three lower court rulings found all the men guilty of murder. Their cases
had been appealed to the Supreme Court, which overturned the guilty
verdicts. The latest decision, made public this week, reaffirms that
reversal.

"The objection by the relatives of the victims is dismissed, and the ruling
of this court is confirmed," the court said in a one-page verdict.

The ruling may still not be final, however, because a lower court in Kerman
can appeal the decision to the full membership of the Supreme Court. More
than 50 Supreme Court judges would then take part in the final decision. 

According to the Supreme Court's earlier decision, the killers, who are
members of the Basiji Force, volunteer vigilantes favored by the country's
supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
considered their victims morally corrupt and, according to Islamic teachings
and Iran's Islamic penal code, their blood could therefore be shed.

The last victims, for example, were a young couple engaged to be married who
the killers claimed were walking together in public. 

Members of the Basiji Force are known for attacking reformist politicians
and pro-democracy meetings. President Ahmadinejad was a member of the force,
but the Supreme Court judges who issued the ruling are not considered to be
specifically affiliated with it. 

Iran's Islamic penal code, which is a parallel system to its civic code,
says murder charges can be dropped if the accused can prove the killing was
carried out because the victim was morally corrupt. 

This is true even if the killer identified the victim mistakenly as corrupt.
In that case, the law requires "blood money" to be paid to the family. Every
year in Iran, a senior cleric determines the amount of blood money required
in such cases. This year it is $40,000 if the victim is a Muslim man, and
half that for a Muslim woman or a non-Muslim.

In a long interview with the Iranian Student News Agency, a Supreme Court
judge, Mohammad Sadegh Al-e-Eshagh, who did not take part in this case,
sought Wednesday to discourage vigilante killings, saying those carried out
without a court order should be punished. 

At the same time, he laid out examples of moral corruption that do permit
bloodshed, including armed banditry, adultery by a wife and insults to the
Prophet Muhammad. 

"The roots of the problems are in our laws," said Mohammad Seifzadeh, a
lawyer and a member of the Association for Defenders of Human Rights in
Tehran. "Such cases happen as long as we have laws that allow the killer to
decide whether the victim is corrupt or not. Ironically, such laws show that
the establishment is not capable of bringing justice, and so it leaves it to
ordinary people to do it."

The ruling stems from a case in 2002 in Kerman that began after the accused
watched a tape by a senior cleric who ruled that Muslims could kill a
morally corrupt person if the law failed to confront that person.

Some 17 people were killed in gruesome ways after that viewing, but only
five deaths were linked to this group. The six accused, all in their early
20s, explained to the court that they had taken their victims outside the
city after they had identified them. Then they stoned them to death or
drowned them in a pond by sitting on their chests. 

Three of the families had given their consent under pressure by the killers'
families to accept financial compensation, said Mr. Ahmadi, the lawyer. 

Such killings have occurred in the past. A member of the security forces
shot and killed a young man in 2005 in the subway in Karaj, near Tehran, for
what he also claimed was immoral behavior by the victim. 

A judge caused outrage in 2004 in Neka, in the north, after he issued a
death sentence for a 16-year old girl for what he said were chastity crimes.
After the summary trial, he had her hanged in public immediately, before the
necessary approval from the Supreme Court. 

Neither man has been punished. 

"Such laws are not acceptable in our society today," said Hossein Nejad
Malayeri, the brother of Gholamreza Nejad Malayeri, who was killed by the
group in Kerman. "That means if somebody has money, he can kill, and claim
the victim was corrupt." 




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