Iran hanged four gangsters in public after they were...

Iran hanged four gangsters in public after they were convicted for a series of kidnappings and rapes, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Under Iran's strict Islamic law, in place since the 1979 revolution, the death sentence is usually reserved for murder, rape, armed robbery and drug trafficking.
"The four were hanged in a square in Arak town before dawn," the agency said.
It said they were members of a gang that abducted girls on the streets of the central town of Arak and sexually assaulted them. "They gave rides to their victims...and then later raped them," IRNA said.
President Mohammad Khatami's reformist allies have argued that public executions present a negative image of the Islamic Republic and urged the conservative-run judiciary to stop them.
But conservatives defend the policy by arguing that they have a deterrent effect.
"Such public hangings will serve as lesson for those who violate the law," Golasmreza Kholf-Rezai, the local head of justice department, told the crowd gathered to see the condemned men swing on the gallows.
European human rights officials in 2002 voiced their opposition to the death penalty and the way in which the sentences are carried out, such as stoning and hanging.
Iran later abolished death by stoning, reserved for men and women convicted of adultery, in an apparent bid to ease European Union concerns ahead of a possible trade agreement.