MASS HANGINGS IN IRAN

thirteen unidentified people were scheduled for execution at the crack of dawn at Tehran’s Ghasr prison on July 18. They had all been sentenced to death for murder by lower courts, and their convictions were upheld by the Supreme Court.
A report by the AFP, quoting prison authorities, said eight of the convicts were hanged at dawn in Tehran´s Ghasr prison. Five more were spared at the last minute, after the heirs or relatives of their victims intervened, the jail authorities explained.
However according to a report by the daily Qods, the number of Iranians hanged at dawn at the Ghasr Prison on Wednesday was eleven. The newspaper said that only three of the Ghasr inmates scheduled to die were reprieved after intervention by the heirs or relatives of their victims.
In the southern city of Shiraz, another man was hanged at dawn, the conservative Jaam-e Jam paper reported. The man, identified only as Keramat, was put to death for murder. He had stabbed to death another man four years ago.
The "eye for an eye" law in force in Iran since the Islamic revolution of 1979 calls for execution for all murders, but provides for the death sentence to be commuted to a lengthy jail term if the family of the victim pardons the killer.
The hangings came just one week after the stoning of Maryam Ayoubi, 30, in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. Ayoubi, whose case had been taken up by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson during a visit to Iran last year, had been condemned to death for murder and adultery. She had been found guilty of murdering her husband with the help of her cousin, identified only as Hossein.
The cousin, who was also charged with being the woman’s lover, was condemned to hang, but it is not known whether he has been executed yet. Hossein was found guilty of setting fire to the body of the victim, who was murdered last year in the Narmak district, eastern Tehran.
Ayoubi had also been sentenced to 100 lashes, a judiciary source said, without saying whether she had been whipped before her execution.
The stoning was the second in two months, and stirred widespread international concern. The convicts stoned to death were both women.