TEHRAN, 20 February 2007 — Iran hanged in public yesterday a man who had confessed to involvement in last week’s bomb attack that killed 11 elite Revolutionary Guards, televising recorded footage of the convict’s execution.
Nosrallah Shanbeh-Zehi had been found guilty by a revolutionary court of participating in Wednesday’s bombing in the restive southeastern border province of Sistan-Balochistan, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.
In a highly unusual move, state television aired recorded footage in its lunchtime news bulletin of the execution in front of hundreds of cheering residents at the scene of the attack in the provincial capital of Zahedan.
The pictures showed the rope — attached to a crane — being placed around the man’s neck by a group of executioners, whose faces were covered by hoods. He stared in front of him as the rope dropped and appeared to die instantly. His death drew clenched fists and shouts of joy from the crowd.
Shanbeh-Zehi had already been paraded on local television a day after the bombing confessing to involvement in the blast and working with the Jundallah Sunni militant group. He has also been found guilty of a previous attack on a bank in which two people died, IRNA said.
The car bomb attack in Zahedan, a city 40 kilometers from the Pakistan border, was followed on Friday by late night clashes and a percussion bomb, which lightly wounded one person.
Provincial officials have said the unrest bears the hallmarks of involvement by the United States and Britain, reiterating previous allegations of Western trouble-making in Sistan-Balochistan, which unlike Iran as a whole is mainly Sunni.
According to unconfirmed website reports, Wednesday’s attack was claimed by Jundallah, a shadowy Sunni militant group which has been blamed for a string of armed incidents in the volatile province. The hanging brings to at least 28 the number of executions in Iran this year.
At least 154 people were executed in 2006, according to an AFP tally based on press and witness reports.
Capital offenses in the Islamic republic include murder, rape, armed robbery, apostasy, blasphemy, serious drug trafficking, repeated sodomy, adultery or prostitution, treason and espionage.
Last week, New York-based Human Rights Watch urged Iran to “halt all executions of people who have been sentenced to death in secret following unfair trials that do not meet minimal international standards of justice.”
That statement was prompted by the execution of 10 people since December who were convicted of involvement in bombings in the west of Iran in 2005.
