Unclenched Fist = 3 Death Sentences + 1 Juvenile Hanged

Last week Barack Obama decided to defund an organization called the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center and it hasn't taken long to see the effects. Yesterday the Iranians announced the sentencing to death of 3 people who participated in the street protests in the wake of the recent elections and today comes word that they carried out the execution of 18 year old who was convicted of murder, in a case that at least raises the question that it was a case of self defense.

Gee I wonder what the odds are that they will stop their march towards getting nuclear weapons?

This is what weakness, either real or perceived, in foreign policy will get you. But let's go ahead and ignore all of the human rights abuses so we can extend a hand and make friends. The problem with extending a hand to your enemies is that one of these times you are going to pull back a nub.

Iran continues to build a wall of secrecy

This time is has to do with executions. No, silly they aren't going to stop them. They are just going to stop doing them in public.

Iran's chief justice banned executing convicts in public unless there are approved "social necessities," state-run Iran Press TV reported.

A spokesman for Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi said the decree was issued Tuesday.

I guess all those videos and pictures being shown in the free world is starting to have an impact, not that it has hurt their ability to maintain the "moral high ground" among the leftists in the west. So now it appears they have learned something else from their close ties to Russia. How to make people disappear.

Happy New Year in Iran: 13 Hanged in One Day

The media make such a big deal over the death penalty here in the U.S., but never have much to say when there are public hangings in Iran. At least some human rights groups are being consistent, however, and are speaking out after 13 people were publicly hanged yesterday.

In a crackdown on "immoral behaviour" Iranian authorities have hanged a total of 13 convicted criminals - including a mother of two charged with murder.

Mother Raheleh Zamani, was found guilty of murdering her husband after discovering he was having an affair, reports said.

It was claimed she chopped her husband's body into pieces, and she was hanged alongside seven men convicted of murder, in a mass execution at a prison, the Iranian Student Correspondents' Association (ISCA) reported.

The large number of executions in recent months has drawn criticism from the European Union and Western rights groups.

Rights group Amnesty International says Iran has one of the highest rates of execution in the world.

This number has increased since July when police began their crackdown on immoral behaviour.

The 13 public hangings were believed to be one of the highest in a single day in the past few months.

However, on Sept 5 last year, 21 convicted drug smugglers and other criminals were executed.

In these most recent hangings eight people convicted of murder, including Zamani, were executed in Tehran's Evin prison.

Three drug smugglers were publicly executed in the holy city of Qom, south of the capital, it was reported.

Two other drug traffickers were hanged in the southeastern city of Zahedan in Sistan-Baluchestan province, notorious for clashes between security forces and smugglers, according to the state broadcaster.

"Of the 11 people who were supposed to be hanged in Evin prison today ... 8 were executed," said the ISNA broadcast agency.

In addition to murder and drug smuggling, a variety of offenses under Sharia law are punishable by death.

Murder, adultery, rape, armed robbery, apostasy and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Iran's Sharia law, practised since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.

They don't seem very eager to report the news in Iran.