An Iranian judge sentenced a man to death for killing...

An Iranian judge sentenced a man to death for killing 17 children, most of them young boys he raped first, and three adults. Mohammad Bijeh, 30, and his 24-year-old accomplice Ali Baghi, who was jailed for 15 years, had been dubbed the "vampires of the Tehran desert" by local media. They began to prey on children more than two years previously in the town of Pakdasht, south of Tehran, where the pair worked as brick makers. But the killings did not come to light because many victims were from illegal refugee families from neighbouring Afghanistan who were afraid to come forward. The trial was briefly halted earlier in the day when relatives of one of the victims attacked Bijeh as he gave testimony. Family members began throwing chairs and tried to grab him as he recounted how he kidnapped, raped and killed one of his young victims. Police whisked the two men out of the courtroom.
"Such crimes were not committed even by the Serbs against the Bosnians," sobbed the father of the boy whose murder Bijeh was recounting.
The killers put dead cats and dogs near the shallow graves of their victims to disguise the stench of the corpses.
Bijeh was convicted of 19 of the killings and received 16 death sentences. Four families did not press for the death penalty, agreeing to settle for blood money compensation instead.
One death penalty was for rape. As the killers came from indigent families the state would pay the blood money to the four families that demanded it.