Six men were hanged in Iran since September 16 and...

Six men were hanged in Iran since September 16 and eight others face the same sentence after being convicted on charges ranging from murder to armed robbery, newspapers said.
The Islamic Republic enforces a strict Sharia law according to which punishment for rape, murder, drug smuggling and armed robbery is the death penalty.
But the stiff punishments, which also include lashings for woman who fail to adhere to the strict Islamic dress code in public, have been criticised by the allies of moderate President Mohammad Khatami. They say it sends a poor image of Iran and Islam to the outside world.
The four convicted murderers were executed inside Tehran's Qasr prison at dawn on September 16, the Tosea daily said.
The other two, who were executed in public in Ahwaz and Abedeh in southern Iran on September 17, were described as an armed robber, Ali Davud Zahiri, and a drug smuggler, unidentified. The execution of the latter was witnessed by a number of people gathered in Basij square, who expressed satisfaction and called for more stringent measures against drug traffickers, according to Etemad newspaper.
Six members of a gang of men who were found guilty of kidnapping and raping women in the capital would also be publicly executed in Tehran in the next few days, along with a young man condemned for killing of a police officer in a city park and another man convicted of the murder of a security guard in a market.