Behnoud Shojai was found guilty of murder after allegedly killing another young man in a park in Tehran during a fight three years ago.

He reportedly stabbed the man with a shard of glass after he was threatened with a knife.

Behnoud, 17-years-old at the time of the crime, will be hanged in what is Iran’s second execution of an alleged criminal who was underage at the time of the crime.

On Monday the European parliament asked Iranian authorities to suspend the execution of Behnoud, while Amnesty International has also appealed to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei and president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to commute the death sentence.

Iran has ratified international treaties including the convention on the rights of the child, which forbids capital punishment for underage youth who commit crimes.

In Iran young men are considered to be adults from the age of 14 and young women from the age of eight and a half, and therefore responsible for any crimes that they commit.

Last weekend 12 people were hanged in the Iranian cities of Ahwaz, Birjand and Mashhad.

The group was accused of drug trafficking, assault with a weapon and rape.

Last week 80 death sentences were issued by the tribunal in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city, 850 kilometres east of Tehran, said Iran’s privately owned news agency Fars.

Eighty-four people have been executed in Iran since 2008, while 317 people were executed in Iran in 2007.

Iran has one of the highest rates of capital punishment in the world.

A report by Amnesty International says that since 1990, Iran has executed at least 28 child offenders, six of them in 2007.

At least 86 child offenders are currently on death row in Iran, although Amnesty International says this number may be higher as at least a further 15 Afghan child offenders have reportedly been sentenced to death recently

source:http://www.iranfocus.com/en/human-rights/iran-young-man-faces-execution-despite-international-protests.html

Sunday, Paul joined in on the bike ride and rode with Maresco for about 10 miles before returning to his Lake Jackson home.

“That’s why I can’t fade out of this campaign very easily, with people like this,” Paul said.

Maresco, who lives in Hawaii, began his journey on Oct. 21 at the Santa Monica Pier at the end of Route 66 in California. His destination is Washington, D.C., and he has taken a southern route through the United States so far. (more…)

And for anyone who still can overlook his lack of “family values” when it comes to multiple marriages, or his (conflicting) views on a woman’s right to privacy in her personal and medical decisions, surely will at least be a bit disturbed by the fact that Guiliani is closer with the corrupt and indicted Bernard Kerik than he is with his own children.

Whether this kills him in the primary battle or the general election, I think this is a simple and direct reminder of what the “strong on crime former Federal prosecutor” Rudolph Giuliani deems to be important when choosing his relationships. (more…)

CNN imposed a restriction against candidates with less than $1 million in fundraising money, leaving former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel off the invite list. Gravel has raised only $240,000 through the first three quarters of 2007.

(One wonders whether CNN would have made the limit $2 million if Gravel had reached the $1 million mark.) Gravel did not “qualify” for the Oct. 30 debate in Philadelphia, either. (more…)

The projection, by the Democratic majority on the Joint Economic Committee, is more than $1 trillion higher than a recent forecast by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which accounted only for direct spending and interest payments and assumed a moderate withdrawal of troops between now and 2017.

“The full costs of this war to our economy are manifested in ways that have never been accounted for by this administration: We are funding this war with borrowed money, Americans are paying more at the gas pump, and it will take years for our military to recover from the damage of the president’s failed war strategy,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said at a news conference Tuesday. (more…)

The Democrats are a sadder story. When you have given up this much, what is there left for you to be?

Four Democratic senators were not present to cast a vote: Biden, Clinton, Dodd, and Obama. One Republican did not vote: John McCain.

When the Kansas-Nebraska Act legitimated the expansion of slavery, Abraham Lincoln said in a great speech of 1854: “Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it.” (more…)

The big news is that Ron Paul, the 10-term Republican congressman from Texas and longtime standard-bearer for libertarian and constitutionalist ideas, raised more money – by a considerable amount – in a 24-hour period than any other Republican candidate.

Some 37,000 people, 21,000 of them new donors, contributed $4.3 million to Ron Paul’s campaign Monday, Guy Fawkes Day. (more…)

Mr. Warner did not write the CSPI series, but he acts as the agent for a group of scholars who are the authors.

FP: Bill Warner, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Warner: Thank you Jamie for this opportunity.

FP: Tell us a bit about the Center for the Study of Political Islam. (more…)

Their major point of criticism: Ron Paul wants to go back to the gold standard. O, and he’s strange. And anti-war.

Luckily for Paul, Libertarian bloggers rushed to his defense shortly after the posts linked to above were published. John Cole basically tells Dean Barnett to shut up since his own record isn’t the brightest in the world, while Cato’s Justin Logan seems to believe that the fact that neoconservatives hate Paul is a good thing. (more…)

His chances at becoming nominated, let alone elected president, seem to range from barely a blip on the radar at 8%, all the way down to an ‘also ran’ at 1% in national polls.

But where are they getting these statistics, and who is doing the polling?

Well, once again, media bias is neither hidden nor spun properly, even by the demagogues that pimp the information on television, radio, and in print. (more…)