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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.

Iraqi Citizen Executed in Iran

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Public hanging, Iran
Iran Human Rights (IHR); November 12, 2018: An Iraqi citizen was hanged at Zanjan Central Prison on a murder charge.

According to the IHR sources, Soran Rashid Zahedi (Nickname: Soran Holiri), 33, was executed on the morning of November 6, 2018.

The Iraqi national was a resident of Iran for almost three decades. The source who doesn't want to be named, told IHR, “Four years ago, Soran was working in a cement factory in Zanjan city where he killed a person over there. 

The victim owed Soran three million and a half Tomans. On the day of the incident, the victim received seven million Tomans loan but refused to pay his debt to Soran. They fought and the person was killed.”

Soran’s family could not obtain a consent from the victims' families to stop his death sentences. The Penal Code of Iran does not specifically state that convicted murderers are subject to the death penalty, but rather to “qisas” which means “retribution in kind” or retaliation. In this way, the State effectively puts the responsibility for executions for murder on the shoulders of the victim’s family.

The Iranian media outlets have not published news related to the aforementioned execution so far.

According to Iran Human Rights annual report on the death penalty, 240 of the 517 execution sentences in 2017 were implemented due to murder charges. 

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

Source: iranhr.net, November 12, 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: Iran
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