Iranian regime sentences mosque bombers to death

TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran has sentenced to death three men convicted of a mosque bombing which left 14 people dead in the southern city of Shiraz in April, Kayhan newspaper reported on Saturday.

Prosecutor Ali Akbar Heidari-Far said Mohsen Eslamian, 21, and Ali Asghar Pashtar, 20 -- both university students -- and Rouzbeh Yahyazadeh, 32, would be hanged in Shiraz once the sentence was confirmed by the supreme court.

"A revolutionary court in Tehran has found the three main accused of the case to be 'mohareb' (enemies of God) and 'corrupt on the earth'," he said, without disclosing when the verdict was issued.

The three men were tried over the bombing of a packed mosque during evening prayers in Shiraz and also faced charges of "belonging to a terrorist group," cooperating with hostile armed groups, seeking to overthrow the Islamic system and planning to launch other attacks.

"This verdict has been sent to the supreme court for validation and as soon the confirmation of the sentence returns they are going to be hanged in Shiraz," Heidari-Far added.

According to Iranian penal law, all death sentences have to approved by the supreme court.

"The rest of the accused in this case will be tried later," the prosecutor said.

The Fars news agency said meanwhile that the convicts will be "hanged in public" because of the serious nature of their action, adding that the trial started on November 22.

"Due to the graveness of this terrorist atrocity which has martyred and wounded many Shirazi people, it is necessary to carry out the execution in public and in front of the mosque," Fars said quoting the verdict.

In January, Iran's judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi decreed that public executions would only be carried out with his approval and "based on social necessities."

The authorities had initially announced the arrest of 15 suspects and the judiciary said in October that the prosecution wanted the death penalty for seven people for causing the blast that also wounded more than 200 people.

The strike in Shiraz was the first in decades in Iran's Persian heartland. The normally placid city is not in a border zone, nor is it home to any significant ethnic or religious minority population.

Heidari-Far last week said the accused had ties with a monarchist opposition group outside Iran and took orders from a US-based Iranian identified only as Jamshid aiming to assassinate a high-ranking official in Iran.

According to Fars, the verdict identified "Jamshid as CIA agent abroad," but it did not give further information.

Heidari-Far said the men in Iran were led by a domestic operative identified as Majid Rastgoo, who had committed suicide after being injured while making a bomb in a Tehran hotel in August.

He also said the case remains open against the monarchist group's chief Foroud Fooladvand, who frequently attacks leaders of the Islamic republic in foreign-based satellite broadcasts.

Fooladvand heads an opposition expatriate group named the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, which claimed responsibility on its website for the Shiraz blast and vowed that more "hostile acts" were to be expected.

Iranians have a sizeable diaspora community in Iran's arch-foe, the United States, some of whom support the son of Iran's deposed shah, Reza Pahlavi.