http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=7232888&src=rss/oddlyEnoughNews

TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian who beheaded his two sons after they witnessed him murder a woman was sentenced to hang Tuesday by a Tehran court, in a case that has hit Iran's front pages.


The man, known only as Ismail, pleaded guilty to beheading and dicing up the bodies of two adults and severing the heads of his sons, aged 7 and 11, newspapers and the ISNA students news agency reported.

"Ismail suspected his wife Masoumeh of having an affair with a man called Ebrahim. He then forced her to marry him in a lavish ceremony attended by some 700 guests," Naser Seraj, the head of penal courts in Tehran province, told ISNA.

Ismail then killed Ebrahim and his sister Fatemeh.

"I had beheaded sheep before and I felt Fatemeh was a sheep so I cut her head off and chopped her body to small pieces. I placed her head in a tray which scared the life out of my children," he was quoted as saying by Etemad newspaper.

After learning that his sons had witnessed Fatemeh's murder, Ismail beheaded them.

Seraj said Ismail received two death sentences for killing the adults. Under Iran's Islamic law a father need only pay blood money for killing his children. Masoumeh was sentenced to death for her affair with Ebrahim. Adultery is punishable by death in Iran.

var year = new Date() document.write('© Reuters ' + year.getFullYear() + ". All Rights Reserved." ); © Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.

Great world we live in. No?

:devil

uhhh I just can't seem to find the words for that...only thing that comes to mind is that it's seriously effed up.

Although it is a good sign that today vs. 50yrs ago they are punishing him....of course you have to wonder if he hadn't killed the guy what his punishment would be. And can someone tell me what "blood money" means?

So let me get this straight...

Adultry is WORSE than killing your own kids?

Ass backwards...

It's pretty simple in a fucked up way.
You're not penalized (much) for damaging your own property, but the property forfeits its existance when it goes against its master.

Fucking asshats.

I read something similar to this about a year ago in some Middle Eastern country. During a wedding the groom had killed his brother-inlaw over a dispute then served him for dinner at the wedding. Was pretty freaking sick.

"served him for dinner"


WTF? :eek:

These sorts of laws were very popular among the peoples of the Middle East over the last few thousand years. Some of those peoples just haven't developed much in that time, and most live under the rules of Islam.

"Blood money" is money you (or your kin) pay to avoid punishment or revenge for a killing. It was done up to the middle ages in europe. I couldn't find when it was repealed/outlawed in England, but it was probably in the last 200-300 years (note, trial by combat, trial by ordeal and trial by compurgation were only outlawed in England just under 200 years ago). The blood money price was usually set based on the social class of the person killed, going up in price until the price of the king's blood money was so high that no one could pay it. If you read the Icelandic sagas at all, they talk about it all the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw

The flip side of this decision is the way the British have dealt with the issue of Iraqis killed by the British forces by mistake. The south is very tribal. Killing someone, especially if he came from a powerful tribe, might start a chain of revenge killings unless the two tribes were to agree on some sort of compensation, ie blood money. So while we are sitting with some people in Amarah we hear the following story.

During a wedding celebration, two young men fire celebratory shots into the air. A British patrol happens to be near by, they think they have a couple of Fedayeen shooting at them. Bang bang, the Iraqis are dead.

The British take the bodies to the hospital, and after conducting an investigation they find out they were not Fedayeen, a mistake has been made. So the next day two British officers, two Iraqi lawyers and a translator go to the hospital and ask how the locals deal with this sort of thing. The concept of "Fasil" or blood money is explained to them. A couple of days later the word spreads that the British have paid 15 million Iraqi dinars in blood money to the families of the two Iraqi men. Further bloodshed was stopped. Perfect. I am not discussing the moral correctness of blood money. This is the way things are done here and if this money will stop any sort of revenge killings then it is worth it. No, I only have one comment: being foreigners, they paid too much. Habibi, everything is bargainable here, and paying 15 million in blood money will ruin the blood money market - it is way too much. You should improve your tribal connections and get someone to bargain for you. http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,989084,00.html

["Blood money" is money you (or your kin) pay to avoid punishment or revenge for a killing. It was done up to the middle ages in europe. I couldn't find when it was repealed/outlawed in England, but it was probably in the last 200-300 years (note, trial by combat, trial by ordeal and trial by compurgation were only outlawed in England just under 200 years ago). The blood money price was usually set based on the social class of the person killed, going up in price until the price of the king's blood money was so high that no one could pay it. If you read the Icelandic sagas at all, they talk about it all the time.

Well,well look's the Iraqi's are open to western style democracy after all and the move to a litigious society.
Viva'la Freedom at the end of a M-1 Abrahm's and a Mc'donalds fry container.

A number of Middle Eastern societies in the past would regard wives, children, homes, cattle, etc as nothing more than property. Under their form of law, as mentioned previously, a man could pay "blood money" to keep from being punished in other ways.

This was popular among those who had money because it meant that they could run amok with impunity. If you had enough money, you could do pretty much what you wanted and the law would back you up... as long as you paid off the relatives.

In the case of a man who killed, maimed, SOLD, etc... his own wife or children, this was allowable because they were considered chattel, in other words property. They were considered to belong to him as much as his house or cattle. In their sense of justice, who cares if a man damages his own property? And if you damaged another man's property (child, wife, etc), then you could pay him the "worth" of that piece of property... money for the blood of the person killed.