Iranian Religious Judge Personally Hangs Girl, 16

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No lawyer permitted at any time. She was publicly hanged for having sex with an unmarried man. The religious judge put the rope around her neck himself.

About par for the mullahs' course, actually--they routinely execute minors and dissidents.



"Iran Focus

Neka (northern Iran), Aug 31 – The orphaned 16-year-old girl hanged in front of residents in this town close to the Caspian Sea on August 15 suffered years of brutal violence, exploitation and torture in the hands of relatives, local officials and plain strangers, and in a country where girls are the most vulnerable members of society, she had no one to go to for help.

The tragic picture emerges from dozens of interviews conducted by an Iran Focus correspondent with Atefeh Rajabi’s classmates, friends, relatives and neighbors in this humid, overcrowded industrial town that sits on a busy highway linking Tehran with the north of the country.

The hanging of Atefeh Rajabi has shocked the residents of Neka, who still differ widely in their assessment of the girl, but none voices support for the punishment that she has received. An air of tension and eerie silence hangs over the town’s smoke-filled tea-houses, or chaikhanehs, where men spend hours chatting quietly in clusters of three or four over tea. In a summer month like August, business should be booming in this town as thousands of Tehran residents flock to the sandy beaches of the Caspian. But right now, the visitors are for the most part not holidaymakers.

“There are lots of strangers who come and we are used to them,” says Askar, a young shopkeeper who sells a variety of citrus fruit jams. “But right now, all of them are asking about the girl. They want to know who she was and how she died.”

The shock of Atefeh’s execution has gone far beyond this town. Even in a country that has the highest number of executions in the world and routinely executes minors, Iranians across the nation have been bewildered by accounts of the hanging of a 16-year-old girl. The fact that the religious judge himself put the rope around her neck and the letters of “congratulations” from the town’s governor to the judge, commending him for his “firm approach” have only added to the torment and pain many say they have felt.

“Atefeh was not a well-behaved girl, that’s for sure. But do you hang a girl for having sex with an unmarried man?” asked Fariba, a girl in Atefeh’s neighborhood, who like many others did not want to be identified.

According to judicial records, by the time Atefeh was 16, she had been convicted five times of having sex with unmarried men. Each time she spent some time in jail and was given 100 lashes (Under Iran’s law, punishment for having sex with a married man would have been far heavier.)

Atefeh’s father is an unemployed drug addict whose whereabouts are not known. Her mother died when Atefeh was still a child and she was left in the care of her octogenarian grandparents, which meant no care at all.

“She was abused by a close relative,” says Mina, one of the few girls in Neka who identify themselves as Atefeh’s friends. “But she never dared even to talk about it to anyone. Tell your teachers? They’ll call you a whore. Tell the police? They lock you up and rape you. Better keep your mouth shut.”

Mina sobs as she recalls her friend’s tormented life, but many of these horrendous experiences are everyday facts of life for girls being brought up under a rigid theocratic regime that has institutionalized misogyny in its laws and practices.

“She sometimes talked about what these ‘Islamic moral policemen’ did to her while she was in jail. She still had nightmares about that. She said Behshahr Prison was the Hell itself.”

Alijan, a local grocer with graying hair, said many parents did not want Atefeh to socialize with their kids, because they thought she would have a corrupting influence on other young girls.

“Who can blame them?” he said, with a deep sigh. “In this country, if you’re a man and you go to jail, you can forget about having a future. Now imagine if a girl goes to jail. She was hopeless.”

“I knew this girl very well and she did not deserve what they did to her,” explains a middle-aged woman who once taught Atefeh in the local girls’ school. “She was lively, intelligent, and, of course, rebellious. She wouldn’t take injustice from anyone. But the authorities here equate these qualities in a girl to prostitution and evil. They wanted to give all the girls and women a lesson.”

Hamid was one of those fathers in the neighborhood who did not want her two daughters to befriend Atefeh, but with hindsight, he feels the guilt of not having done anything to help the girl.

“I think the most devastating event in her life was the death of her mother,” Hamid said. “Before that, she was a normal girl. Her mother was everything to her. When she died, she had no one to look after her.”

A pharmacist, whose shop is not far away from the Railway Square, where Atefeh was hanged, recalls her final, painful hour. “When agents of the State Security Forces brought her to the gallows, I felt cold sweat running down my back. She looked so young and innocent, standing there in the middle of all these bearded men in military fatigues. Judge Reza’i must have felt a personal grudge against her. He put the rope around her neck and left her dangling on the gallows for 45 minutes. I looked around and everyone in the crowd was sobbing and damning the mullahs for doing this to our young people.”

Atefeh had no access to a lawyer at any stage and her death sentence was upheld by a Supreme Court that is dominated by fundamentalist mullahs. Haji Rezaii, the religious judge, was reportedly so incensed with Atefeh’s “sharp tongue” during the trial that he travelled to Tehran to convince the mullahs of the Supreme Court to uphold the death sentence.

The tragically short life of Atefeh Rajabi its brutal end are a reminder of the plight of millions of girls in a country where, according to state-owned newspapers, 75 percent of the population live below the poverty line, 66 percent of women are victims of some form of domestic violence, and over 70 percent of women suffer from varying degrees of depression. Iran remains, in the words of UN Human Rights Rapporteur Maurice Copithorne, “a prison for women.”

http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/new...hp?storyid=137

[Duke]

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She was publicly hanged for having sex with an unmarried man.

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I wonder how much happiness her faith brought her... perhaps we should cross-post this in the psych forum.

~D

[ACPlayer]

I recommend that all death penalty cases be executed by the judge issuing the verdict. Perhaps the immediacy of the actua; event will help drive home the point that the death penalty is permanent.

[BeerMoney]

[ QUOTE ]
I recommend that all death penalty cases be executed by the judge issuing the verdict. Perhaps the immediacy of the actua; event will help drive home the point that the death penalty is permanent.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good idea, but I'm sure you'll find a lot of high and mighty that will actually take enjoyment from it.

[Cyrus]

The Iranian theocracy is a direct result of American policy regarding Iran. People (mostly the neo-conservative fringe) tend to forget what happened in Iran and how we ended up with Ayatollah Khomeini running things. But it's a true and very instructive story, nonetheless.

Briefly, at the height of the Cold War, when the "best and brightest" of the State Department were seeing Red Bears everywhere, the CIA staged a coup in Iran. That was in 1953. The democratically elected, anti-communist, nationalist Mossadegh was deposed and the Shah was installed in his place.

The Shah, under direct CIA assistance and guidance (this is all part of the historical record), started a very successful program of eliminating all opponents to his regime that were to the left of the Religious Right. This left, by the early 70s, the regime without any secular opposition to which the Iranian middle and working class could turn to. So, when the time came that the Shah lost all support among the people and the agitation against him started in the streets, the Religious Right, once benign towards the Shah and always fiercely anti-communist, was the only alternative to the Shah for Iranians.

The rest is History.

Part of the blame for that poor young Iranian girl's assassination lies squarely at the feet of all those who shaped the criminally short-sighted American foreign policy at the time. A criminal policy that continued unabated with America's enthusiastic support of Saddam Hussein’s aggressive war against the Iranians.

They'll never learn.

[ACPlayer]

... and the same short sighted thinking has set the stage for Iraq to end up as a theocracy, from a secular, successful state that it once was.

They really never learn.

[GWB]

[ QUOTE ]
Briefly, at the height of the Cold War, when the "best and brightest" of the State Department were seeing Red Bears everywhere, the CIA staged a coup in Iran. That was in 1953. The democratically elected, anti-communist, nationalist Mossadegh was deposed and the Shah was installed in his place.



[/ QUOTE ]

This grossly oversimplifies the situation. Mossadegh was rapidly becoming massively unpopular as he drove the Iranian economy into the gutter. We were faced with a Communist government which was formed and waiting in the north of Iran, or the Shah (the titular monarch at the time). Just what the Shah would do in future years was not clear, but the Communists would certainly oppress yet another country if they took over.

A tough choice we were faced with, a point that you conveniently overlook with the benefit of hindsight.

[nicky g]

"Mossadegh was rapidly becoming massively unpopular as he drove the Iranian economy into the gutter"

If he was so unpopular why did you have to engineer a CIA coup to overthrow him? Noone seriously argues he was some sort of oppressive dicator; if he was that unpopular the Iranians themselves could have overthrown him and put their own choice of leader in power instead of a vicious tyrant.

[GWB]

[ QUOTE ]
if he was that unpopular the Iranians themselves could have overthrown him and put their own choice of leader in power instead of a vicious tyrant.

[/ QUOTE ]

Mossadegh was replaced by another Prime Minister, the Shah was already the Shah at the time. You are comparing later developments of the Shah increasing his personal power with the immediate action of Mossadegh's replacement - a common practice in parliamentary systems.

[La Brujita]

Thank you for posting this artice. I had not heard of this case before and am very glad I got a chance to read it.

I feel a bit sick to my stomache right now after reading it.