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Thread: Iran Capital Punishment News

  1. #21
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    They said they MAY let them go by the end of Ramadan since that's when they pardon people IF they want to. I kinda doubt it though since I think something would've happened by now.

  2. #22
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    Iran State TV: American Hikers Released
    2nd judge signs bail paperwork, release to come shortly

    Two American men jailed as spies in Iran since 2009 have been released, Iran's official Press TV reports.

    Prior to the report, a lawyer for two Americans imprisoned as spies in Iran for more than two years expects to start paperwork for their release Wednesday, he told CNN.

    A second judge signed bail paperwork for Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, Masoud Shafiee said, leaving only minor banking details to be sorted out.

    Shafiee said he was on the way to Evin Prison, where the two Americans are being held, to begin release paperwork.

    He declined to say who was paying bail for the men.

    They are due to be released at 3 p.m. local time (6:30 a.m. ET), he said, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

    Swiss Ambassador Livia Leu Agosti told CNN she had not been officially informed of the pending release, but would undertake all duties normally handled by American officials in such circumstances.

    Switzerland handles United States interests in Tehran because there is no American embassy there.

    Fattal and Bauer were arrested along with a third hiker, Sarah Shourd, in July 2009 after apparently straying over an unmarked border between Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran. Shourd was freed earlier on medical grounds.

    Bauer and Fattal, both 29, were convicted last month of entering Iran illegally and spying for the United States, and each sentenced to eight years in prison.

    The Americans say they accidentally crossed into Iran when they veered off a dirt road while hiking near a sight seeing venture in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. They have denied the charges and appealed the sentence while serving time in Tehran's Evin prison.

    High-profile American Muslims including boxing legend Muhammad Ali have called for their release, and a high-profile delegation and Christian and Muslim American religious leaders met Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran last week to plead for their freedom.

    Ahmadinejad said before the meeting that the release of Fattal and Bauer was imminent, setting off a week-long roller coaster ride of expectations.

    The judiciary shot back that only it could make decisions about their release.

    Shafiee then announced that all the paperwork had been filed for them to be freed on bail, but their release was delayed by the lack of a judge's signature on bail paperwork.

    Reports have put the bail amount at $500,000 for each American.

    An Omani official flew to Iran on September 14 to help work on any negotiation, a Western diplomat told CNN at the time.

    Oman helped secure the release of Shourd, posting her bail last September, a senior Obama administration official said at the time.

    Ahmadinejad is slated to speak in New York at the U.N. General Assembly this week, but his visit is not linked to moves to release the Americans, according to Mohammad Javad Larijani, the top human rights official of the Iranian judiciary.

    http://www.wfmz.com/news/Iran-State-...2/-/4qtm59z/-/

  3. #23
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    White House Condemns Execution Sentence of Iranian Pastor

    The White House on Thursday called on Iran to release Youcef Nadarkhani, the 34-year-old pastor who faces execution for refusing to renounce his Christian faith.

    "Pastor Nadarkhani has done nothing more than maintain his devout faith, which is a universal right for all people," the statement released by the White House said. "That the Iranian authorities would try to force him to renounce that faith violates the religious values they claim to defend, crosses all bounds of decency, and breaches Iran's own international obligations."

    The statement went on to say that a decision to impose the death penalty would only put on display Iran's "utter disregard for religious freedom" and "continuing violation of the universal rights of its citizens."

    The US Department of State has already condemned the Iranian judiciary for demanding that Nadarkhani renounce his faith or face execution.

    "While Iran's leaders hypocritically claim to promote tolerance, they continue to detain, imprison, harass and abuse those who simply wish to worship the faith of their choosing," it said this week.

    Likewise, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said he "deplored" Nadarkhani's plight.

    "This demonstrates the Iranian regime's continued unwillingness to abide by its constitutional and international obligations to respect religious freedom," Hague said. "I pay tribute to the courage shown by Pastor Nadarkhani, who has no case to answer, and call on the Iranian authorities to overturn his sentence."

    A member of the Protestant evangelical Church of Iran and the father of two young boys, Nadarkhani held services in underground "home churches" in Rasht, a provincial town about 150 miles (240km) northwest of Tehran, according to The (London) Times.

    In 2009, he challenged the regime's insistence that all schools should teach Islam. He was arrested in October that year and has been imprisoned in Rasht ever since. He was sentenced to death for apostasy by a court in Rasht last year.

    Read more on myFOXdfw.com: http://www.myfoxdfw.com/dpps/news/wh...#ixzz1ZNcfUIqw

  4. #24
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    Iran presses pastor: Islam or death

    Iran’s government and security apparatus have ratcheted up the pressure on Evangelical pastor Youcef Nadarkhani to convert to Islam or face execution, Fox News reported on Saturday.

    Youcef Nadarkhani, now 34, was arrested in 2009 for questioning the compulsory Islamic education of his children and for seeking to register a home-based church. He was sentenced to death in 2010.

    RELATED:
    Iran: Christian pastor charged with rape, not apostasy

    Iran’s security officials recently delivered a book on Islam to Nadarkhani, Fox News said. He is in prison Rasht on the Caspian Sea coast.

    The Iranian officials told “him they would be back to discuss the material and hear his opinion,” according to the report.

    Fox cited “sources close to the case.”

    David Parsons, spokesman for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday the new development is “very troubling.”

    There need to be “three attempts to make him convert to Islam before they can kill him,” Parsons said. He cited Shari’a Islamic law as the basis for the threeattempts rule.

    Iran “is going through the motions” and “trying to do it in a very public way for the Muslim world and maybe, in their mind, thinking they can placate the West. It is outrageous,” said Parsons, who is a contributing editor to The Jerusalem Post Christian Edition.

    The case “should be an eye-opener for world leaders,” he said. “They should know what Islam teaches in terms of ‘inferior religions’ like Judaism and Christianity.”

    Fox News wrote that it secured “a digital copy of the book given to Nadarkhani, a 300-page compilation entitled Beshaarat-eh Ahdein, meaning ‘Message of the Two Eras,’ referring to the New and Old Testaments. Through various narratives, the book claims Christianity is a fabrication and attempts to establish the superiority of Islam.”

    Parsons said it “needs to be a priority to hold the Iranian regime accountable.

    Governments, even Muslim governments, should not be allowing this. How can anyone find this acceptable this day?” Present Truth Ministries has campaigned since 2009 for Nadarkhani’s release and works to help persecuted Christians in the Middle East. “We cannot wait another moment, we have to contact our elected officials,” the USbased organization urges on its website in connection with Nadarkhani.

    Dr. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, an authority on minority groups in the Islamic Republic of Iran, told the Post by phone from Berlin on Sunday that the book given to Nadarkhani, Beshaarat-eh Ahdein, is “religious indoctrination.”

    There is “no freedom of opinion or religion in Iran,” he said. The Iranian regime has been closing newspapers and “there is no freedom of conscience” in the Islamic Republic.

    The book argues against the Judaism and Christianity, as well as against Bahais and Zoroastrians, Wahdat-Hagh, a senior fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels, wrote in a followup e-mail.

    “The fact that Mr. Nadarkhani was given this book makes clear that it does not deal with freedom of conscience, which does not exist in Iran, rather it deals with propaganda...,” he said.

    Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader in Iran, has reacted to pressure regarding Nadarkhani’s case, and Khamenei has the authority to vacate the death penalty sentence against the pastor, Wahdat-Hagh added.

    “This case shows that Iran does not seek dialogue with Christians, rather it wants to convince Christians of the correctness of converting to Islam,” he said.

    http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=244635

  5. #25
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    Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani Execution Delayed, But For How Long?

    Youcef Nadarkhani, the Iranian Christian pastor who faces the death penalty for the crime of apostasy, will remain in jail as he waits for the country's Supreme Leader to determine his fate.

    In Nadarkhani's case, delays are both blessings and further tests of his faith. After trials at every level of the country's court system, the pastor's case was handed over to Ayatollah Khamenei in October with a mid-December deadline.

    But Khamenei has yet to touch the issue and instead Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, the head of the Iran's judicial system, ruled this week that the pastor will remain inside Lakan prison for at least four more months.

    "This recent move appears to be an attempt to buy the Supreme Leader additional time before issuing what could be a precedential decision," said Jordan Sekulow, the Executive Director of the American center for Law and Justice.

    "If the Supreme Leader, who is charged with providing the official interpretation of Shariah law, decides that Pastor Youcef is not an apostate, that decision could be used as persuasive evidence in future apostasy cases. This outcome may be exactly what the regime fears and is trying to avoid," he added.


    In the new four month period, Ayatollah Khamenei will have to decide if Nadarkhani is guilty of either converting from Islam to Christianity when he was a teenager of if Nadarkhani ever attempted to convert other Muslims to Christianity.

    If the Ayatollah does not reach a verdict by the extended deadline, the decision will go back to the Gilan court that has already sentenced Nadarkhani to death once.

    Still, with international attention growing, the Ayatollah's apparent reluctance to make a decision could be an indication that Nadarkhani will escape, at the very least, his immediate death.

    Plea Bargain

    Nadarkhani was jailed in 2009 and then convicted a year later of the crime of abandoning Islam. Nadarkhani has maintained that he was never a Muslim, but under Iran's religious-legal code, all citizens are Muslim from birth.

    Nadarkhani was sentenced to death by hanging in November 2010, and the sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court the following June.

    However, judges have agreed to release Nadarkhani on the condition that he repent and convert to Islam. The pastor was brought to court at least five times to renounce Christianity, and each time the pastor refused, according to sources.

    "Any attempt by the regime to force Pastor Youcef to convert to Islam violates both the Iranian Constitution and international principles of religious freedom. Each day the Iranian regime delays it decision and continues to detain Pastor Youcef for his beliefs is a flagrant violation of human rights," noted Sekulow.

    With the latest delay, there is a continuing fear that Iran is trying force the pastor to forsake his beliefs.

    "They decided to keep him in prison for one more year in order to use whatever means necessary to cause him to convert to Islam. After one year we do not know what they will do. It is clear that they want Youcef's case to slip away from international attention," said Present Truth Ministries, a non-denominational ministry that has remained close with the Nadarkhani case.

    Present Truth, which states on its Web site that it wants "to bring the Gospel to Muslims and Bible teaching to Muslim-background Christians," claims the Iranian authorities are simply going to leave Nadarkhani in prison without a final verdict for as long as possible, and have put the true deadline at a year.

    Criminal Charges

    Officially, apostasy is not a crime under Iran's penal code. However, it is a punishable offense in the religious texts and fatwas decreed by Khomeini. If Nadarkhani is executed for the crime, he will be the first person killed for apostasy in more than 20 years.

    The case has been difficult to follow outside Iran, where the government has kept most of the trial details under wraps. Various judges have denied that the execution order exists, but Nadarkani's lawyers have detailed the

    Additionally, once the news began spreading westward, Iranian officials denied Nadarkani's charges had anything to do with his religious affiliation. They said that the pastor had been convicted of rape and of Zionism, a vague crime that could include spying for Israel, both of which are punishable by death.

    "His crime is not, as some claim, converting others to Christianity," Gholomali Rezvani, the Gilan province deputy governor, told the Fars news agency in October. "He is guilty of security-related crimes."

    Despite the claim, earlier court documents only mention the apostasy charges and the latest sentence also seems to ignore the "security-related crimes."

    "Mr. Youcef Nadarkhani, son of Byrom, 32 years old, married, born in Rasht in the state of Gilan, is convicted of turning his back on Islam, the greatest religion the prophesy of Mohammad at the age of 19," a court filing signed by judges Morteza Fazel and Azizoallah Razaghi in 2010 stated.

    The document continues:

    "He has often participated in Christian worship and organized home church services, evangelizing and has been baptized and baptized others, converting Muslims to Christianity. He has been accused of breaking Islamic Law that from puberty (15 years according to Islamic law) until the age of 19 the year 1996, he was raised a Muslim in a Muslim home.

    "During court trials, he denied the prophecy of Mohammad and the authority of Islam. He has stated that he is a Christian and no longer Muslim. During many sessions in court with the presence of his attorney and a judge, he has been sentenced to execution by hanging according to article 8 of Tahrir-olvasileh."

    The White House has pushed for the release of Nadarkhani on a few occasions. On Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finally commented on the pastor's detention after 200,000 Americans signed a petition for U.S. government intervention in the case.

    "Today, we call on every government to release all prisoners of conscience immediately and unconditionally, including Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani," Clinton stated.

    Christianity is a protected religion under Iran's constitution, and religious freedom is protected by the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which Iran is a signatory.

    Nonetheless, the threat of government intimidation is always looming over Iranian Christians. Last Christmas, a group of 25 Christians in Tehran were rounded up, interrogated and then released. Additionally, at least 300 people have been arrested for their religious beliefs in the last 18 months, according to Iranian church organization Elam Ministries.

    http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/26886...layed-long.htm

  6. #26
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    Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani to face death by stoning or hanging: semi-official ISNA news agency

    Authorities in Iran said Sunday they are again moving ahead with plans to execute a woman sentenced to death by stoning on an adultery conviction in a case that sparked an international outcry, but are considering whether to carry out the punishment by hanging instead.

    Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is already behind bars, serving a 10-year sentence on a separate conviction in the murder of her husband. Amid the international outrage her case generated, Iran in July 2010 suspended plans to carry out her death sentence on the adultery conviction.

    On Sunday, a senior judiciary official said experts were studying whether the punishment of stoning could be changed to hanging.

    "There is no haste. ... We are waiting to see whether we can carry out the execution of a person sentenced to stoning by hanging or not," said Malek Ajdar Sharifi, the head of justice department of East Azerbaijan province, where Ashtiani is jailed.

    "As soon as the result (of the investigation) is obtained, we will carry out the sentence," he said, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency.

    The charge of a married woman having an illicit relationship requires a punishment of stoning, he said.

    He said judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani ordered a halt to stoning in order to allow Islamic experts to investigate whether the punishment can be altered in Ashtiani's case.

    Ashtiani was convicted of adultery in 2006 after the murder of her husband.

    She was later convicted of being an accessory to her husband's murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

    http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com...i-to-face.html

  7. #27
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    Iran Sentences American Amir Mirzaei Hekmati To Death

    TEHRAN, Iran — An American man accused by Iran of working for the CIA could face the death penalty, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported Tuesday.

    In a closed court hearing, the prosecution applied for capital punishment, the report said, because the suspect, identified as Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, “admitted that he received training in the United States and planned to imply that Iran was involved in terrorist activities in foreign countries” after returning to the U.S.

    The prosecutor said Hekmati entered Iran’s intelligence department three times.

    The report said Hekmati repeated a confession broadcast on state TV Dec. 18.

    Under the Iranian law spying can lead to death penalty only in military cases .

    The Fars report said Hekmati’s lawyer, who was identified only by his surname, Samadi, denied the charges. He said Iranian intelligence blocked Hekmati from infiltrating, and under the Iranian law, intention to infiltrate is not a crime.

    The lawyer said Hekmati was deceived by the CIA. No date for the next court hearing was released.

    Hekmati, 28, was born in Arizona. His family is of Iranian origin. His father, who lives in Michigan, said his son is not a CIA spy and was visiting his grandmothers in Iran when he was arrested.

    Because his father is Iranian, Hekmati is considered an Iranian citizen.

    Iran charges that as a U.S. Marine, he received special training and served at U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan before heading to Iran for his alleged intelligence mission.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...IKP_story.html

  8. #28
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    Iran denies US access to accused facing death penalty for spying for CIA

    IRAN has denied a new request from Swiss diplomats to meet with a US citizen of Iranian descent now reported to be on trial on charges of spying for the CIA, the US State Department said.

    Swiss diplomats, who represent US interests in Tehran in the absence of diplomatic ties, asked Iran on Wednesday for permission to see alleged spy Amir Mirzai Hekmati, said State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner.

    "This now makes, I believe, the third time they denied us," Mr Toner told reporters. "We are going to continue to push for consular access via the Swiss."

    Toner, who along with other US officials have called for Mr Hekmati's release, said Tuesday that the Iranians had on Saturday denied a Swiss request for access to him. It was not clear when the first request was made.

    Iran on Tuesday put Mr Hekmati on trial on charges of spying for the CIA, with the prosecutor calling for the "maximum punishment" - presumably the death penalty - if he is convicted, the Fars news agency reported.

    Confessions extracted from Mr Hekmati "have made it clear that the accused cooperated with the Central Intelligence Agency and acted against (Iran's) national security," the prosecutor was quoted as saying.

    Mr Hekmati, a 28-year-old former US Marine born in the United States to an Iranian immigrant family, was shown on Iranian state television mid-December saying in fluent Farsi and English that he was a CIA operative sent to infiltrate the Iranian intelligence ministry.

    US-Iranian ties have been fraught with tension since the 1979 Islamic revolution that overthrew the pro-Western shah. A series of detentions of Americans in Iran have further strained the relationship.

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1226232357295

  9. #29
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    Verdict awaited in trial of ‘CIA spy’: Iran official

    A trial in Iran of an American-Iranian man accused of being a CIA spy has finished and he is now awaiting the verdict, the country’s chief prosecutor said Monday, according to the Mehr news agency.

    The prosecutor, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie, also rejected a US government call for the accused man, Amir Mirzai Hekmati, to be released.

    The prosecution has demanded the “maximum punishment” in the case, which presumably means the death penalty.

    Hekmati, a 28-year-old former US Marine born in the United States to an Iranian immigrant family, was shown on Iranian state television mid-December saying in fluent Farsi and English that he was a CIA operative sent to infiltrate the Iranian intelligence ministry.

    In his sole trial hearing, on December 27, prosecutors said Hekmati’s “confession” showed he worked with the US Central Intelligence Agency to try to infiltrate the Iranian intelligence ministry by posing as a disaffected former US soldier with classified information to give.

    “The trial of the accused is finished. The (defence) lawyer has to submit his argument. The judge has not yet given his verdict,” Ejeie was quoted as saying.

    He added that the US government was “brazen” to request Hekmati’s release, saying he “committed a crime in Iran and must be judged according to the law.”

    The US State Department said Iran has not permitted diplomats from the Swiss embassy in Tehran — which handles US interests in the absence of US-Iran ties — to see Hekmati.

    Hekmati, who was born in the United States, travelled to Iran months ago to visit his Iranian grandmothers, according to his family in the US, who insist that he is not a spy.

    http://www.khaleejtimes.com/displaya...iddleeast&col=

  10. #30
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    Warning Sounded Iran May Kill Condemned Christian Pastor in Secret

    An Iranian pastor facing death a death sentence for refusing to renounce his Christian faith and embrace Islam is expected to spend another year in jail, awaiting an appeal on his death sentence, while government authorities try to force him to convert to Islam.

    However, the delay could be a ruse and the Iranian government could kill him in secret, warns the founder of Present Truth Ministries, which was the first to report on Pastor Yosef Nadarkhani’s arrest in October 2009.

    That’s the most recent development in Nadarkhani’s religious and political nightmare of more than two years, according to The Christian Post.

    Nadarkhani, who has been jailed since he was arrested and charged with apostasy, came within two days of being hanged in September until Iranian court officials — perhaps influenced by international outrage from the Rev. Franklin Graham, House Speaker John Boehner, and other notables around the world — decided to let him appeal the sentence.

    The 34-year-old Nadarkhani, who became a Christian at the age of 19, was tried and convicted in December 2010. The pastor of several home congregations in a small Christian community called the Church of Iran, he has refused repeatedly to recant his faith.

    The apostasy charge stems from the government’s allegation that he converted from Islam to Christianity, while his defense claims that he had not been a Muslim before becoming a Christian. The government contends that he was a Muslim because he was born into a Muslim household.

    He refused three times during the three days running up to his execution date to recant, and his death appeared to be imminent until he received a reprieve of sorts.

    The evangelical pastor’s lawyer was confident at one time that his conviction would be reversed. But he was told that Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, the head of Iran’s judiciary, asked the presiding judge to delay judgment on his appeal and keep him in prison for another year, the Christian Post reported last month.

    The deliberate delay is meant to let the case “slip away from international attention” even as the authorities continue to “use whatever means necessary to cause him to convert to Islam,” the Christian Post quotes Present Truth Ministries’ Jason DeMars as saying.

    The case has taken several outrageous turns since Nardakhani’s arrest, including the arrest of his wife in an attempt to force him to recant, as well as the addition of other trumped-up charges of rape, security violations, and Zionism that Iranian officials added around the execution date. That was the first time in the two-year process that such charges had been mentioned, and many observers regarded the additional charges as an effort to rationalize the death penalty.

    Although the Iranian court very well could wait another year before deciding Nadarkhani’s fate, “there are no assurances that he will not be executed,” DeMars warned. “It could happen at any time. This is the way that the Iranian government operates with executions. They do not give advance notice, and it is done in secret.”

    http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Ira...1/02/id/422783

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