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U.S. | I'm a Death Row Pastor. They're Just Ordinary Folks

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In the early 1970s I was a North Carolinian, white boy from the South attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and working in East Harlem as part of a program. In my senior year, I visited men at the Bronx House of Detention. I had never been in a prison or jail, but people in East Harlem were dealing with these places and the police all the time. This experience truly turned my life around.

Afghan national executed in Eastern Iran

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Public execution, Iran
Iran Human Rights (Jan 3 2018): Official sources reported that the number of executions at Mashhad Central Prison on Sunday has risen to two.

According to Mashregh News, a young man who was arrested and sentenced to death for murder at the age of 19 was hanged at Mashhad Central Prison on the morning of Sunday December 31. 

The boy was an Afghan citizen and he was arrested and sentenced to death for murdering his fellow countryman in Mashhad on May 24, 2014.

The official media had previously reported the execution of another prisoner at the same prison on murder charges.

According to Iran Human Rights annual report on the death penalty, 142 of the 530 execution sentences in 2016 were implemented due to murder charges. 

There is a lack of a classification of murder by degree in Iran which results in issuing death sentence for any kind of murder regardless of intensity and intent.

Source: Iran Human Rights, January 4, 2018


Iran Hangs 18-Year-Old Boy Convicted Of Murder When He Was 16


Amir Hossein Pojahedfar
Reports from Iran say an 18-year-old man who was convicted of raping and killing a child when he was 16 has been hanged, despite calls by United Nations rights officials and Amnesty International to stop the execution.

Gholamhossein Esmaili, judiciary chief for Tehran Province, said that the execution took place on the morning of January 4, according to local media.

Amirhossein Pourjafar was sentenced to death in September 2016 after being convicted of the rape and murder of a 6-year-old girl from Iran's Afghan community.

Pourjafar had originally been scheduled to be executed in October, but the execution was postponed following international pressure.

"The Iranian authorities must immediately halt the execution of this juvenile offender and annul the death sentence against him in compliance with their international obligations," Asma Jahangir and Agnes Callamard, 2 UN special envoys, said in a joint statement on January 3.

Amnesty International also called on Tehran to halt putting Pourjafar to death, saying that Iran was a signatory to an international treaty banning the execution of people who commit crimes under the age of 18.

Iran applies the death penalty for crimes including rape, homosexuality, murder, and drug trafficking, as well as apostasy.

Source: rferl.org, January 4, 2018


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
Location: Mashhad, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran
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