Iran Focus

On Sunday, August 15, a 16-year-old girl in the town of Neka, northern Iran, was executed. Atefeh Sahaleh was hanged in public on Simetry Street off Rah Ahan Street at the city center.

The sentence was issued by the head of Neka’s Justice Department and subsequently upheld by the mullahs’ Supreme Court and carried out with the approval of Judiciary Chief Mahmoud Shahroudi.

In her summary trial, the teenage victim did not have any lawyer and efforts by her family to recruit a lawyer was to no avail. Atefeh personally defended herself. She told the religious judge, Haji Rezaii, that he should punish the main perpetrators of moral corruption not the victims.

The criminal judge personally pursued Atefeh’s death sentence, beyond all normal procedures and finally gained the approval of the Supreme Court. After her execution Rezai said her punishment was not execution but he had her executed for her “sharp tongue”.

On Sunday August 15, 2004, a 16 year old girl by the name of Atefe Rajabi, daughter of Ghassem Rajabi, was executed in the town of Neka, located in the province of Mazandaran, for “engaging in acts incompatible with chastity”. The execution was carried out by the order of Neka’s “judicial administrator” and was approved by both the Supreme Court of the Islamic Republic and the chief of the nation’s “judiciary branch.”

Although according to her birth certificate she was only 16 years old, the local court falsely claimed that she was 22.

Three months ago, during her appearance before the local court, fiercely angry the young girl hurled insults at the local judge, Haji Reza, who is also the chief judicial administrator of the city, and it is said as another expression of protest took off some of her clothes in the courtroom. This act by the young girl made the administrator so furious that he evaluated her file personally and in less than three months received a go-ahead from the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Court for her execution. The animosity and anger of Haji Reza was so strong that he personally put the rope around the girl’s delicate neck and personally gave the signal to the crane operator, by raising his hand, to begin pulling the rope.

It may be noted that although according to the Islamic Republic’s own penal laws the presence of an attorney for the defense [is supposed to be] mandatory, regardless of the defendant’s ability to afford one, nevertheless the girl remained without an attorney. Her unfortunate father, while tears poured from his eyes, went about the city beseeching the townspeople for money to hire an attorney who in the least would provide his daughter with a line of defense.

The young girl was buried the same day after her execution but during that same night her corpse was disinterred by unknown individuals and robbed. The theft remains unexplained and the Rajabi family has filed a complaint.

The 16 year old girl’s male companion, who had been arrested as well, received 100 lashes and, after the Islamic punishment was carried out, released.