Allied Apostates of Islam

Atefeh Rajabi Sahaaleh (1988 - August 15, 2004)

Atefeh was a 16-year-old schoolgirl who was executed in Iran after being sentenced to death by an Iranian religious judge, Haji Rezai, for allegedly having committed "acts incompatible with chastity": She was repeatedly raped throughout her childhood and is something of a feminist icon for her courage in arguing in court that the perpetrator of rape should be punished, not the victim. She was publicly executed.

Atefeh's mother died in a car accident when she was five. Her father became a drug addict and she was forced to care for her octegenerian grandparents. Despite her attending to their needs they are reported to have completely ignored her. She grew up in the town of Neka, Iran and was described as a "lively and intelligent girl".

She was arrested three times by the Moral Police once for being present at a party, another when caught alone in a car with her male cousin. It is illegal in Iran for a boy and girl to meet without an adult. On each occasion she was jailed and whipped. She also privately admitted being repeatedly raped by members of the Police whilst in custody.

On the day she was due to attend a wedding, the Moral Police arrested her as she was preparing dinner for her grandparents. As she had not committed an offense, a petition was presented declaring her a "bad influence". It was not signed.

Atefeh had no access to legal counsel. She was convicted for ‘crimes against chastity’, based on her admission that she had been repeatedly raped by a 51-year-old ex-revolutionary guard turned taxi-driver Ali Darabi, a married man with children. In the court the judge, Haji Rezai acted as Prosecution, Judge and Jury. As Atefeh realised she was losing her case, she removed her hijab and argued that the perpetrator of rape should be punished, not the victim. The judge sentenced her to death.

Atefeh appealed her conviction. Her family could still not afford a lawyer, and none was provided, in contravention of Iranian law. Although such appeals are usually not resolved within a year, her death sentence was upheld by a Supreme Court of conservative mullahs Haji Rezai, the religious judge, was reportedly so incensed with Atefeh’s "sharp tongue" during the trial that he travelled to Tehran personally to convince the mullahs of the Supreme Court to uphold the death sentence. According to the BBC, the documents presented to the Supreme Court of Appeal described her as a 22-year-old, but her ID card clearly stated that she was 16. The judge accepted the incorrect age on the grounds of Atefeh's physique, which he considered 'developed'.

Amnesty International and a number of other organisations have reported that she suffered from psychological illness, both before and at the trial.

She was publicly hanged from a crane in Neka, Iran, on August 15, 2004 . The judge in her case, Haji Rezai, also acted as executioner and applied the noose himself. She was left hanging for 45 minutes. He later boasted that she had been "taught a lesson" for her "sharp tongue". Her father was not notified of her execution. They never said goodbye.

The next day her body was stolen from her grave. It has never been recovered. The Moral Police are considered prime suspects, and have been under suspicion of running a child prostitution network for some time.

Amnesty International and many other human rights organizations from the international community declared her killing to be a crime against humanity and against children of the world.

You can also watch the reporting of this case by clicking below:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

The story of Nazanin Fatehi

On January 3, 2006, Nazanin was sentenced to death for murder by a criminal court, for killing one of three men who tried to rape her and her niece.

According to the Iranian daily Etemaad, then 17-year-old Nazanin and her niece Samieh had been spending some time in a park west of Tehran with their boyfriends, when three men started harassing them. The girls` boyfriends fled from the scene, leaving them helpless behind. The men pushed Nazanin and her niece down on the ground and tried to rape them, and to protect herself, she took out a knife from her pocket and stabbed one of the men in the hand. The girls tried to escape, but the men overtook them, and at this point, Nazanin stabbed one of the other men in the chest, which eventually killed him.

According to the newspaper, she broke down in tears when she told the court: "I wanted to defend myself and my niece. I did not want to kill that boy. At the heat of the moment I did not know what to do because no one came to our help." Nevertheless, the court sentenced her to death by hanging. 

In May, the case was sent to the Supreme Court for consideration. When Nazanin learned that her file has been sent to Tehran, she made a phone-call to her family and asked them to visit her in prison. She said that by the end of the week the Supreme Court would decide her fate. Nazanin’s father left the next morning to visit her in prison. She would not let her father go. She cried and said “I’m scared Dad, don’t leave me here”.

The verdict was given at the end of May 2006. The death sentence was overturned after direction from the head of Judiciary, Ayatollah Shahroudi. It was decided that the case would be sent back to a lower court for a new ruling. After the ruling Nazanin was held in solitary confinement for a couple of weeks, and denied visits from her family.

Nazanin's re-trial started August 30, 2006. She was represented by a lawyer specialized in these kinds of cases, and she did a very good job of defending herself. The trial only lasted for one day, and was then postponed until January 10, 2006. This trial has now finished, and although the written verdict has not been presented, Nazanin's defense attorneys have received verbal confirmation from the court that she will be exonerated from the charge of murder, and that the killing has been recognized as self-defense. However, they think that she used excessive force when defending herself and her niece, and have therefore asked Nazanin to pay blood money in order to receive a pardon from the family of the deceased and then be released from prison.

Nazanin's attorneys are appealing the sentence of blood money, but this appeal may take several months. In the mean time, her lawyers have paid bail, collected by donations from all over the world, so Nazanin could be released from prison.

Nazanin was released and reunited with her family January 31 2007.

Islamic law to blame for this shamble?

In a western country Nazanin would probably be acquitted or at most receive a short prison sentence after the first trial, as she obviously acted in self-defense. Furthermore, since she was only 17 years old, she would be treated as a minor. In Iran however, the minimum age for the death penalty is 15 years for males, and 9, yes nine years for females (Iranian civil code, Article 1210). Although there is no record of girls that young being executed, the fact that the law opens for this speaks clearly about what kind of regime Iran is.

Another point worth noticing is that if Nazanin had let the men rape her, she could in the worst case have been arrested for extra-martial sex, which carries a maximum penalty of 100 lashes
Initially, Nazanin’s case did not get much attention from the media, as is usual with death sentences in Iran. Thanks to Nazanin Afshin-Jam, who created the petition to save Nazanin’s life and told about her in interviews, the media started to pick up, but it was not until the case came up for review by the Supreme Court that it finally got the attention it deserved in the media. In this period, the case also got substantial attention at blogs and private home pages, and a lot of people wrote the Iranian government and protested Nazanin’s death sentence. This was probably a significant reason for why the Ayatollah Shahroudi chose to overturn the death sentence.

Nazanin Saved!!!!

Nazanin was exonerated on the charge of murder, but sentenced to pay blood money. Nazanin's lawyers appealed this sentence, but paid bail (collected by donations) so Nazanin could be released from prison. Nazanin was released from prison and reunited with her family Wednesday January 31.

Murder and stoning of Du'aa Khalil Aswad -  (1989 or 1990 - April 7th 2007).

 
Cellphone videos have appeared on the Internet showing an Iraqi mob stoning and kicking to death a 17-year-old girl after she offended her minority community by eloping with a Muslim man. 

Du'aa Khalil Aswad was a member of northern Iraq's Yazidi religious sect but, according to local officials, she was murdered on April the 7th 2007 by her brothers and uncles after she allegedly converted to Islam. In the video -- rapidly spreading on the Internet -- Aswad is shown lying in the road as men kick her and throw a large lump of rock or concrete at her head. 

Her face is drenched in blood but uniformed and armed officers of the Iraqi police stand by and do nothing to prevent the attack. The slim, dark-haired girl is wearing a red tracksuit top and black underwear during the beating At one point she struggles to sit up and cover herself, but a man kicks her in the face knocking her violently back to the ground. The assault continues for several minutes and she does not appear to cry out nor resist her attackers. Members of a large crowd can be seen filming the murder on their cellphones, some of them shouting or kicking out at the cowering victim. Nobody tries to help her.

After her death Aswad was buried with the remains of a dog, allegedly to demonstrate that she was worthless. An autopsy revealed that she died of a fractured skull and spine. When news of Aswad's murder surfaced, it triggered an apparent revenge attack.

On April 23, gunmen stopped a bus carrying workers to her community, the village of Beshika 10 kilometres (six miles) outside Mosul, dragged out 23 Yazidis and shot them dead. While it is a Kurdish speaking area, Beshika lies outside northern Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region. The United Nations' quarterly report on human rights in Iraq expressed serious concern over a rapid rise in so-called "honour killings" of women deemed to have betrayed their families in Kurdish Iraq. Yazidis -- who number some 500,000, mainly in northern Iraq -- speak a dialect of Kurdish but follow their own religion and have their own cultural traditions. They believe in God the creator but their main focus of worship is Malak Taus, the chief of the archangels, often represented by a peacock. Followers of other religions know this angel as Lucifer or Satan, leading to popular prejudice that the secretive Yazidis are devil-worshippers. Nevertheless, the community has survived for centuries alongside its Muslim and Christian neighbours. Now, however, sectarian war is gripping much of Iraq.

>>Click on this link to view the equally horrific act of  "revenge" for this Stoning<<

Two gay teenagers were executed in Iran - for the "crime" of  homosexuality 19th July 2005.

One youth was over the age of 18 and the other was a minor, under the age of 18. They have simply been identified with their initials of 'A.M' & 'M.A' 

The youths were hanged in Edalat (Justice) Square in the city of
Mashhad, in north east Iran. They were sentenced to death by Court No.19.

Iran enforces Islamic Sharia law, which dictates the death penalty for gay sex.

They admitted to having gay sex (probably under torture) but claimed in their defence that most young boys had sex with each other and that they were not aware that homosexuality was punishable by death.

Prior to their execution, the teenagers were held in prison for 14 months and severely beaten with 228 lashes.

Their length of detention suggests that they committed the so-called offences more than a year earlier, when they were possibly around the age of 16.

Ruhollah Rezazadeh, the lawyer of the youngest boy (under 18), had appealed that he was too young to be executed and that the court should take into account his tender age (believed to be 16 or 17). But the Supreme Court in Tehran ordered him to be hanged.

Under the Iranian penal code, girls as young as nine and boys as young as 15 can be hanged.

Three other young gay Iranians are being hunted by the police, but they have gone into hiding and cannot be found. If caught, they will also face execution.

News of the two executions was reported by ISNA (Iranian Students News Agency) on 19 July.

A later news story by Iran In Focus, allegedly based on this original ISNA report, claimed the youths were executed for sexually assaulting a 13 year old boy. But the ISNA report does not mention any sexual assault.

A report of the executions on the website of the respected democratic opposition movement, The National Council of Resistance Of Iran, also makes no reference to a sexual assault.

The allegation of sexual assault may either be a trumped up charge to undermine public sympathy for the youths (a frequent tactic by the Islamist regime in Iran).

Or it may be that the 13 year old was a willing participant but that Iranian law (like UK law) deems that no person of that age is capable of sexual consent and that therefore any sexual contact is automatically deemed in law to be a sex assault.

If the 13 year old was sexually assaulted, why was he not identified and also put on trial (under Iranian law both the victims and perpetrators of sexual crimes are punished)?

Full story in Farsi from ISNA, with three photographs

"The entire country is a gigantic prison, with Islamic rule sustained by detention without trial, torture and state-sanctioned murder.

According to Iranian human rights campaigners, over 4,000 lesbians and gay men have been executed since the Ayatollahs seized power in 1979.

Altogether, an estimated 100,000 Iranians have been put to death over the last 26 years of clerical rule. The victims include women who have sex outside of marriage and political opponents of the Islamist government.