12 Iranian Thugs Executed - an unfair report

There was a post in Mideastyouth about some executed thugs in Iran. Indeed, a very one sided report of the event it was. Here is another report of the whole thing. Which report is more accurate? Probably none! Here you can see a different view, and finally, choice is yours. Note that I’m not here to support executing of them, but that post depicted the event as “executing some people whose punishment was much excessive, not comparable to their crimes” which was far away from the truth.

Since few months ago, IR Police (NAJA) enforced a series of missions, which were first known as ‘Hijab Crackdown’, but it was not limited to Hijab issue.

Another phase of those missions was dedicated to capturing some local criminals. Everybody who has an experience of living in some certain districts in large (or even small) cities of Iran, for sure has heard of (or even encountered -god forbid) these Local Criminals, called ‘Lat’. its enough to know that some of those executed ones, most of them Lat, had up to 10 rapes in their rich files, in addition to theft, beating, threatening, etc.

Note that these local criminals don’t work as single ones, but work as a local group. There is a very well designed hierarchical system in each group: a leader called ‘Gonde Lat’ (Major Lat) at the top, and many minor Lat who follow the orders of the leader. The final aim of each minor is to become a major and form his own group. Minors and Majors usually carry very big knives called Qameh with themselves, and do not hesitate to attack others if they can/please.

Many young boys and girls were raped by these groups, and the victim or his/her family did not dare to report the case to the police, for the group threatened them to do worse to them.

Therefore, it is very unfair to label them as “socially and economically marginalized people who are mostly derived from poor classes and confront all unfair aspects of the society”, for these words obscure the truth. I think that capital punishment was a fair penalty for some of them, even if they were brought to court in for example US in front of a jury.

The other uneven statement in that post was this: “Even if these executed 12 Iranians were thugs, they are the products of the 29 year policies of the Islamic regime.” Such criminals, either as single doers or as groups, are not special to Iran. In addition, one may study the development and historical roots of such groups and find out that they existed even too many years before the establishment of IR.

If one is devoted to opposing IR, its better to avoid telling lies or ignoring facts on the ground: this is the very same mistake that IR propaganda system does when it comes to oppose US, Israel or anything else.

I think if the writer were eager to oppose those executions, he would better take the position of Abazari (a famous Iranian sociologist, assistant professor in Tehran University) who didn’t deny the fact that executed ones were really criminals, but opposed such crackdowns for “these kinds of reactions wont solve the social causes which made these criminals. many countries have had the same experience: after such activities, the very social patterns under which these criminals came to existence will not disappear, therefore these kinds of criminals will be reproduced, and as a consequence of these crackdowns, criminals in their next advent will turn from single-cells/groups to networks-of-criminals, called Mafia. In that case, Police won’t be able to do a thing to them.” (from his statements in a seminar in Tehran university).

Abazari added an example of our own country: “many years ago, such crackdowns were used against prostitution. after a while, prostitutes (due to demand and supply rule) got reproduced, formed networks, and now you may even find some underground agencies in Tehran which provide girls for their customers by a single phone call, while Police is not able to do anything because these networks have become so strong.”