IRAN: Wages of Sin

New executions and purges

Their heads covered with ceremonial hoods, the four condemned prisoners were buried chest-deep in the earth just outside the town of Kerman in southern Iran. After the presiding Islamic judge had cast the first stone, five other people began pelting the hooded figures with rocks, some as large as oranges. The prisoners—two men accused of assorted sex crimes and two female prostitutes—took 15 minutes to die under the barbaric barrage. It was the first time in centuries that execution by stoning, a traditional Islamic punishment for certain sexual...