IRAN: MAN EXECUTED FOR ‘CORRUPTION ON EARTH’ AND HERESY

A 37-year-old prisoner of conscience, Mohsen Amir Aslani, was executed in Rajaishahr prison of Karaj, after being convicted of “Corruption on earth” and heresy, reported the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
A high ranking Iranian Judiciary official, Gholamhossein Esmaeili, confirmed the execution, but he told Mizannews that Mohsen Amir Aslani was executed for rape, denying that Aslani’s death sentence was related to his other charges, including “heresy”, “reinterpreting the Quran”, and “insulting the Prophet Jonah”. He used to run sessions of Quran interpretation, and in one of them he had said “Prophet Jonah didn’t actually survive in the whale’s stomach.”
According to Iran Human Rights (IHR), in March 2007, Amir Aslani had been charged with among others heresy, insulting Prophet Jonah and immoral acts and he was sentenced by the section 31 of Tehran’s Court of Appeal to imprisonment, lashes and economic fines. But later Sadegh Larijani, the head of the judiciary and a hardliner cleric, intervened personally and Amir Aslani was sentenced to death on charges of “corruption on earth, changing Islam’s principles and secondary laws, and new interpretation of Quran,” in addition to charges of rape. According to IHR’s information, Aslani never confessed to the rape and there was not sufficient evidence supporting these charges.