NCRI – The mullahs' inhuman regime whipped in public two brothers for steeling pistachios in the south-central city of Anar, the state-run daily Kargozaran reported on Saturday.
The sentence was carried out before a crowd of 500 local residents shouting at the executioners to stop. Later the prisoners have to serve a 9 months prison terms as complement to their sentence. The mother of the two was present and pleaded for her sons' pardon with no avail.
Flogging prisoners in public as a replacement for hanging in public which has been condemned by the international community came from the mullahs' chief judiciary, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi.
On June 26, mullahs' highest judicial authority, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, says public flogging is an effective criminal deterrent, while imprisonment is a useless punishment.
In an interview broadcast on state TV on June 25 in the evening program, the head of the Iranian regime's Judicial Authority complained that "many Iranian judges, influenced by western propaganda and fearing they will be accused of failing to respect human rights, are not sentencing offenders to effective penalties like public flogging".
"Public flogging is one of most just sentences that can be inflicted on someone who has committed a crime," said Shahroudi.
"The publication of photos and news of public floggings is the best deterrent, while three or four months in prison has no effect," he said.
"We must reduce prison sentences and make use of public flogging more to punish offenders."
In May, the rights group Amnesty International urged Iranian courts to suspend flogging sentences.
"Flogging is a form of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, which amounts to torture," the organization said.
Amnesty said it was outlawed under Article 7 of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
In its latest report, Amnesty International said sentences of flogging and amputation continued to be implemented in Iran, and torture and ill-treatment were widespread in prisons and detention centers.
In little more than a month from Shahroudi's order, in two other places in the country, the cruel and degrading punishment has been carried out by the medeval mullahs' regime in public: on Saturday in the northern city of Khoram-Dareh and on July 15, in the northeastern city of Sabzevar.
