By Hiedeh Farmani
According to Balochinews.com the Persian State media named the executed Sunni Baloch men as following:
1) Manochar Shah Baksh s/o Akbar
2) Mohammad Hassan Shahozai s/o Shey Mohammad
3) Abdul Rashid Hamidi s/o Hassan
4) Yaqoub Ghamshadzai s/o Alauk
5) Abdul Basit Shehaki s/o Qaim
6) Abdul Qudos Didan Naroi s/o Jumma Khan
7) Abdul Sabor Rakhshan s/o Abdul Ghafoor
8) Abdullah Wafai s/o Jan Mohammad
9) Abdul Khaliq MirBalochzai s/o Haibat
10) Tariq Abadiyan s/o Dad Mohammad
11) Yahya Regi s/o Abdul Wahid
12) Khalil Regi s/o Abdul Latif
13) Adraes Notainzai s/o Ibrahim
TEHRAN (AFP) — In a mass prison execution, Iran hanged 13 rebels from the shadowy Sunni insurgent group Jundallah as "enemies of God" for a string of attacks, including kidnapping of foreigners.
The official IRNA news agency said the insurgents were executed in prison in the restive southeastern border city of Zahedan, epicentre of a Sunni Muslim rebellion against the Shiite regime in Tehran.
"Thirteen members of this group were hanged this morning," provincial judiciary chief Ebrahim Hamidi was quoted as saying.
The rebels were accused of being "mohareb" (enemies of God) and of "kidnapping foreigners, killing innocents and of carrying out terrorist acts for the Jundallah group," IRNA said, quoting a local judiciary statement.
State media had announced on Monday that 14 members of Jundallah (Soldiers of God) would be publicly executed on Tuesday.
"After last minute consultations, the executions were carried out in a prison," Hamidi said.
The media had also reported that Abdolhamid Rigi, brother of Jundallah leader Abdolmalik Rigi, was one of the rebels to be executed. Hamidi said Abdolhamid Rigi was not among those hanged on Tuesday but would be executed later this week.
Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan and is home to a sizeable ethnic Baluchi population.
Jundallah has claimed repeated attacks against Iranian government targets in the province which lies on a major trafficking route for narcotics destined for Europe and the Gulf.
In the latest major strike, Jundallah claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing on a Shiite mosque in Zahedan in May that killed 25 people, saying it was a revenge attack for the hanging of members of the Baluch minority.
The mass hangings on Tuesday come 10 days after 20 drug traffickers were executed in the town of Karaj, west of Tehran.
It is rare even in Iran, which according to human rights group Amnesty International carried out more executions than any other country apart from China in 2008, to execute such a large number of people in a single day.
In July last year, 29 people convicted of various crimes including murder, rape and drugs trafficking were executed in the largest mass execution in recent years.
Amnesty had urged the Iranian authorities to halt the Jundallah executions, saying the rebels had not received a fair trial.
"The Iranian authorities must abide by their international obligations to uphold human rights and guarantee fair trials, which is all the more essential in death penalty cases," the London-based watchdog's Middle East and North Africa director Malcolm Smart said.
Amnesty said all the accused were believed to have been arrested before the deadly attack on the Zahedan mosque, for which three people were hanged in May.
The latest hangings bring to at least 177 the number of people executed in the Islamic republic so far this year, according to an AFP count based on news reports. In 2008, Iran executed 246 people.
Tehran says the death penalty is a necessary tool for maintaining public security and is only applied after exhaustive judicial proceedings.
Murder, rape, armed robbery, drugs trafficking and adultery are all punishable by death in Iran.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ ... BcBWKEa7eQ?index=0&ned=uk
Islamic justice is swift and decisive.
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