Spared by chief justice, Iranian hangs anyway Young man executed
after 'victims' recant allegations of teen sex crimes
By Mike Stuckey
Senior news editor
MSNBC
updated 5:01 p.m. ET Dec. 5, 2007
Mike Stuckey
Senior news editor
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Less than a month after Irans chief justice spared the life of a 21-year-old
condemned to die for sex crimes allegedly committed at age 13, the young man
was reportedly hanged Wednesday morning at a prison in Kermanshah province.
"This is a shameful and outrageous travesty of justice and international
human rights law," said Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of the
International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, one of a number of human
rights watchdogs that had focused attention on the case. Just last month,
Ettelbrick had labeled the reversal of the young mans death sentence a
stunning victory for human rights and a reminder of the power of global
protest.
Word of Makvan Mouloodzadehs death came from family members who were
notified by prison authorities and relayed the news to his attorney, Saeid
Eghbali, who in turn passed it along to Western contacts. The execution also
was reported on the Persian language Web site of Mitra Khalatbari, a
Tehran-based journalist who first reported on the case in Iran.
Makvan Mouloodzadeh
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Hossein Alizadeh, a spokesman for the gay and lesbian rights group, said the
execution appeared to have been hurriedly carried out by local authorities to
avoid further interference by Ayatollah Seyed Mahmoud Hashemi Sharudi, Irans
chief justice. It was Sharudi, in the wake of a lengthy appeal from Eghbali and
growing international pressure, who ruled Nov. 10 that the trial and sentencing
of Mouloodzadeh violated Iranian law and Islamic teachings.
Mouloodzadeh was convicted at a closed trial in June of numerous acts of rape
and sodomy that allegedly occurred when he was 13, charges that were initiated
by an angry cousin. Homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran, but only
under a strict legal protocol, and the alleged sex partners and rape victims
all later denied the charges against Mouloodzadeh. But the trial judge used a
legal maneuver to find Mouloodzadeh guilty and sentence him to death anyway.
Some observers believe the case was really rooted in retaliation for
anti-government political activity by relatives of the defendant.
Sharudis ruling was supposed to be reviewed by a bureau of the justice
department and scheduled for retrial, Alizadeh said. But with attorney Eghbali
suspecting heavy lobbying from local authorities, the legal body decided to
ignore the chief justices decision and ratify the courts decision, said
Alizadeh, who saw the execution as defiance of Sharudis ruling. Proof of
that was the hurried, non-public nature of Mouloodzadehs hanging, he said.
The execution was supposed to be carried out in public in the city where
Makvan was born, Alizadeh said. But I think that they realized that it was
going to take a few days and the chief justice could have intervened again.
Neither the condemned mans family nor his attorney, Eghbali, was told about
the execution until after it had occurred, according to Alizadeh, who spoke
with Eghbali and journalist Khalatbari after the hanging.
Msnbc.coms requests for comment via telephone and e-mail to the Mission of
Iran at the United Nations in New York were not answered Wednesday.
The pre-dawn execution came as the Muslim nation basked in vindication of a
U.S. intelligence review released earlier this week that concluded Iran stopped
developing an atomic weapons program in 2003. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on
Wednesday called the report a "declaration of victory" for Iran's nuclear
program, the focus of extensive saber-rattling recently by the Bush
administration.
Nuclear, military distractions
"The Iranian government is taking advantage of that story and violating
peoples basic rights, Alizadeh said. Since the start of the nuclear crisis,
the international community has paid less and less attention to the human
rights issues and more and more to the military and nuclear issues with Iran.
Of particular concern to groups like Alizadehs is what appears to be a surge
in Iran of executions for crimes alleged to have occurred when the perpetrators
were children. With Mouloodzadehs death, Iran has now executed 18 such young
men and women in the past four years, according to Human Rights Watch.
According to Amnesty International, Sudan has executed two juvenile offenders
in the same time period, while China, Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Saudi
Arabia executed one each. The United States last executed a person for crimes
committed as a juvenile in 2003.
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