Iranian spared from noose for alleged sodomy

By comparison, according to statistics compiled by Amnesty International, Sudan executed two juvenile offenders in the same time period, while China, Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia executed one each. The United States last executed a person for crimes committed as a juvenile in 2003, but is second only to Iran in such killings since 1989, having put 19 juvenile offenders to death to Iran’s 24 in that 18-year period.

Mouloodzadeh’s case came to light through the reporting of Mitra Khalatbari, a 21-year-old journalist who works for a Tehran newspaper and publishes a Persian-language blog called “Scream of Silence.”

It is a stark reminder of the differences between Western justice systems and those of Islamic nations, which consider adultery and homosexuality to be capital crimes, mandate precise numbers of whip lashes for certain offenses, allow relatives of a murder victim to decide whether the killer is to be put to death or pay them blood money, and place a higher value on the lives of Muslim men than non-Muslims and women.

In a telephone interview with msnbc.com that was translated by Hossein Alizadeh, a spokesman for the gay and lesbian rights group, Khalatbari said Mouloodzadeh’s trial “took place behind closed doors” in June. Because of her reputation for previously covering such cases, she learned about Mouloodzadeh’s death sentence afterward from his uncle, who lives in Germany.

Through interviews with family members and others, Khalatbari learned that Mouloodzadeh, from Kermanshah province in the north of Iran, was arrested without warning in September of last year. Mouloodzadeh, who at first believed that he had violated prohibitions against smoking or something else during the holy month of Ramadan, had his head shaved and was paraded through town on a donkey, a state-sanctioned humiliation ritual.

Mouloodzadeh’s family was later informed that he had been accused of numerous acts of rape and sodomy, which allegedly occurred when he was 13. The allegations were made to authorities in a letter from Mouloodzadeh’s cousin.

Attorney: No victims until police rounded them up
“That was the statement, in that letter, that triggered the whole arrest,” said Eghbali, whose interview with msnbc.com also was translated by Alizadeh. Even with the letter, the attorney said, there were no alleged victims until the police went out, arrested some men and coerced them into saying that they had committed sodomy with Mouloodzadeh as youngsters.

Even though none of the men ever alleged that Mouloodzadeh raped them and all eventually recanted their stories that any sexual contact had occurred, a local magistrate used a legal maneuver called “knowledge of the judge” to find Mouloodzadeh guilty anyway and sentence him to death, a fate upheld by Iran’s Supreme Court, Eghbali said.

“This is a scandal, a judicial scandal, because they just decided on the basis of pretrial information to pass the sentence,” said Eghbali, who noted numerous other procedural errors in a 10-page appeal to Ayatollah Sharudi.

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