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The Supreme Court of Iran… |
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…has caught the attention of The New York Times, whose April 19th edition contains an article concerning the exoneration of six Basij members, a prominent Iranian militia which once counted current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad amongst its flock. The six had been convicted in three lesser courts of murder, but the Supreme Court has overturned the decision, pointing to a portion of their legal code that allows for the killing of “morally corrupt” persons. Below is an excerpt of the article, link here (free registration required) for its entirety:
Iran’s Islamic penal code, which is a parallel system to its civic code, says murder charges can be dropped if the accused can prove the killing was carried out because the victim was morally corrupt.
This is true even if the killer identified the victim mistakenly as corrupt. In that case, the law requires “blood money†to be paid to the family. Every year in Iran, a senior cleric determines the amount of blood money required in such cases. This year it is $40,000 if the victim is a Muslim man, and half that for a Muslim woman or a non-Muslim.
Iran may be a modern country in a lot of respects, and we should treat them as such in a lot of cases, but this is just regressive. This quote stood out…
Wow…just wow.