Two men Alireza Mafiha and Mohammad Ali Sarvari were hanged in Tehran in Iran after they posted a YouTube clip of themselves committing an armed robbery. They were tried through YouTube and hanged by remote control before a baying crowd of 300 in a public park at the center of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Alireza Mafiha and Mohammad Ali Sarvari posted the YouTube video in December showing themselves robbing and assaulting a man with a machete. A judge delivered verdict that they would be hanged for “waging war against God”. A group of women begged their captors for forgiveness but it was too late. They were executed on Sunday morning.
The YouTube video showed four masked men on motorbikes approaching their victim before two attacked him with a machete before stealing his jacket and bag. According to the Iranian Students News Agency, Mafiha had told his trial they had committed the crime because they were poor. But this defence did not bring them any leniency from the authorities who have employed the harshest of methods to deal with relatively minor crimes. They were convicted of “waging war against God” – a broad charge that can cover actions ranging from anti-state organising to violent assaults which under Iran’s interpretation of Islamic law is punishable by death. The pairs’ accomplices have been sentenced to ten years in jail and 74 lashes. They will then be exiled to a smaller town for five years. Iran carries out one of the world’s highest number of annual executions, according to rights group Amnesty International. But most take place in prisons and a public hanging is very rare.
“The issue of security for our people is more important even than daily bread,” said Sadeq Larijani, head of Iran’s judiciary in December.
