THE IRAN REGIME TO BE JUDGED BY ITS OWN LAWS

THE IRAN REGIME TO BE JUDGED BY ITS OWN LAWS

Stes de Necker

The Iranian Penal Code came into effect in 1991 and is the codification of several different pieces of legislation that addresses punishment for criminal conduct.

The code comprises 729 articles and is divided into five “books” or main sections that deal with general penal provisions and four specific categories of punishments referenced in shari’a law.

These categories include:

a) hadd or hodud (pl.), defined as “crimes against God,” the punishments for which, including degree, type and implementation, are specified in shari’a law ;

b) qesas, retributive justice reserved for crimes that cause death or injury, such as murder ( “retribution crimes”);

c) diyeh, monetary fine or compensation to victims in the form of “bloody money” for unintentional acts that cause death or injury or for intentional crimes not covered by qesas (“compensation crimes”); and

d) ta’zir, or punishments for criminal acts that do not have specific or fixed sentences or penalties under sharia law but are considered to be in conflict with religious or state interests (“discretionary crimes”).

Under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder and first Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, lawmakers drafted a constitution that declared the Jafari or Twelver Shia school of jurisprudence the official state religion and shari’a law as a source of applicable law.

While the current penal code claims to have made some advances in Iranian Law, the Law continues to deprive Iranians of their basic rights under international law to fundamental freedoms, freedom from cruel and arbitrary punishment, and freedom from discrimination.

The penal code includes a specific provision that explicitly empowers judges to rely on religious sources where crimes or punishments are not specified in the penal code. The code fully retains Iran’s overly broad and vaguely worded national security laws under which authorities can prosecute, convict, and sentence political dissidents and others exercising their basic rights to freedom of speech, assembly, association, and religion. The new code also disturbingly expands the definition of another vaguely worded crime, efsad-e fel arz, or “sowing corruption on earth”, which authorities have often used to sentence political dissidents and anti-government critics to death.

The question is: What will happen to Iran if it is to be judged by its own laws?

A cleric regime guilty of the most heinous crimes such as:

Corruption, theft, terrorism, torture, murder, intimidation, lying, self enrichment and threatening world peace.

By their own laws Iran’s leaders should be incarcerated, hanged, stoned, blinded, dismembered and stoned!