Iranian spared from noose for alleged sodomy

Mike Stuckey Senior news editor • Profile • E-mail

Amid international criticism ignited by a crusading journalist, Iran’s chief justice has spared the life of a young man who had been sentenced to be executed as the result of a cousin’s accusations of homosexual acts years earlier.

Ayatollah Seyed Mahmoud Hashemi Sharudi nullified the imminent death sentence of Makvan Mouloodzadeh, 21, for violations of Iranian law and Islamic teachings, Saeid Eghbali, the defendant’s attorney, told msnbc.com this week.

Had Sharudi not intervened, Mouloodzadeh would have joined hundreds of his fellow Iranians, some of them just children when they committed their alleged crimes, who are hanged each year in jail yards and public squares. The executions are often carried out via a method designed to enhance and prolong their suffering: A rope is placed around the condemned person’s neck and he or she is hoisted from the ground with an industrial crane.

Makvan Mouloodzadeh

“This is a stunning victory for human rights and a reminder of the power of global protest,” said Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of the New York-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, which worked to draw attention to Mouloodzadeh’s case.

With overtones of homophobia, suspicions of political retaliation and a conviction based on activities that allegedly occurred eight years earlier, when Mouloodzadeh was just 13, his case captured the attention of a number of international groups that are trying to pressure Iran into improving human rights for women, gays and children.

The groups charge that Iran has increasingly used the death penalty for people convicted of crimes that occurred when they were children or teens.

“Iran leads the world in executing children,” Human Rights Watch said in a summer press release that charged the nation with putting to death at least 17 juvenile offenders since the beginning of 2004, “eight times more than in any other country in the world.”

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