EIGHT WOMEN & ONE MAN TO BE STONED TO DEATH

Alan note: Executions in Iran in 2008 have already DOUBLED over last year and currently run at over ONE PER DAY.

Last week the Mullahs executed 10 people for various "crimes" including "disagreeing with the regime" (mokhalefat ba regime).

Not satisfied with this escalated pace, the Islamic parliament (Majless) is in the process of expanding death penalty reasons. Including making a change of religion or apostasy a mandatory death sentence.

As the average Iranian's disatisfaction with the Mullahs increases, so does the cadence and number of the people they kill or arrest and torture to instill an ever deeper fear into anyone even thinking of voicing any protest.

And the Mullahs have successfully cowed the populace into submission with their brutal mass suppression tactics. Bloody suppression hiddden from the West in the hundreds of "private" prisons that various scurity factions have established to arrest and make disappear anyone of wom they they do approve or fear might cause a political problem.

Not on a national scale but in a single neighborhood. What might be termed "disturbing the peace" in the West has a torture and death sentence hanging over it in Islamic Iran for anyone who dares confront the authorities, including enighborhod level ones.

As an example, not one of the Code Pink group in the USA would still be alive today for what they do with protected impunity here.

In Islamic Iran, the protected immunity is granted to the Bassiji Suppression Brigades for their ruthless killing and maiming of the citizenry - at will and without reproach. On the contrary with reward and encouragement to do so.

As for the stoning, note the regulation that the size of stones used should not be large enough to individually cause death! Death should be by attritional suffering.

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At least eight women and one man are reported to have been sentenced to death by stoning in Iran.
The group, convicted of adultery and sex offences, could be executed at any time, lawyers defending them say.

The lawyers have called on the head of Iran's judiciary to prevent the sentences from being carried out.
The last officially reported stoning in Iran last year drew strong criticism from human rights groups and the European Union.

The eight women sentenced, whose ages range from 27 to 43, had convictions including prostitution, incest and adultery, Reuters news agency reported.

The man, a 50-year-old music teacher, was convicted of illegal sex with a student, reports said.

Moratorium imposed

Under Iran's Islamic law, stoning to death is the punishment for the crime of adultery.

In 2002 Iranian judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi imposed a moratorium on stoning, but at least three people are reported to have been executed by stoning since then.

Alan note: he also banned public executions but who listens as the Mullah judges want to terrorize and the "security" and law enforcement operatives are glad to oblige to show their power and say "be afraid, be very, very afraid"!

Shadi Sadr from the Volunteer Lawyers' Network, which is representing the women, said: "We are very worried as there are at least eight women and one man with a definitive verdict which can be carried out any moment.

"There are no guarantees that the punishments will be halted or commuted."

She called on the international community to back their efforts, adding: "We are in close touch with human rights organisations and many of them have supported our campaign."

Fellow defence lawyer Mariam Kian-Arsi said: "Our specific and clear demand is to have the stoning sentence stopped by Ayatollah Shahroudi since the defendants are liable to be stoned at any moment."

Women 'poorly represented'

In theory the penalty of stoning to death applies to both men and women.

But the lawyers say that in practice, many more women than men receive the sentence because they are less well educated and often poorly represented in court.

Human rights group Amnesty International earlier this year called on Iran to abolish "this grotesque punishment" and said many facing execution by stoning were sentenced after unfair trials.

Under Iran's strict penal code, men convicted of adultery should be buried up to their waists and women up to their chests for stoning. The stones used should not be large enough to kill the person immediately.

Alan note: if a person condemned to be stoned to death manages to escape from the pit, they are then granted a pardon. Note how men are buried to their waists while women to their chests to make escape for the latter not only more difficult but impossible.

Another consequence, intended or otherwise, results in men taking many more painful blows to their torsos, while women get hit more often in the head and neck.

For a feel of this. imagine the pain of being hit repeatedly in the spine or chest/sternum with small fist size stones. And in the head but not enough to render you unconscious.

And Obama wants to "chat" with these "Iranians"?