An Iranian court, in a rare departure from traditional...

An Iranian court, in a rare departure from traditional practice that spares the life of fathers who kill their children, sentenced to death a man who cut off his daughter's head, a newspaper reported.
Under the strict Islamic law applied in Iran, normally only the father or grandfather of the victim has the right to demand the death sentence.
But the state-owned Iran newspaper said judiciary chief Ayatollah Hashemi-Sharoudi had issued a directive earlier in October telling judges to send such criminals to the gallows for "promoting corruption on earth".
As in many such cases, the incident in the southern province of Khuzestan was a so-called "honour killing". The father killed his seven-year-old daughter to prevent bringing shame on the family after suspecting that she had been raped by her uncle.
A subsequent medical examination found that she had not been raped.