Death by stoning in Iran: international outrage leads to last-minute reprieve

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a mother of two who is facing the punishment of stoning to death in Iran.

An Iranian woman will not be stoned to death for adultery, after her lawyer's blog posts sparked a global campaign to save her life.

But 12 other women and three men still face a death sentence by stoning in the theocractic Middle East country, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported.
Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, a 43-year-old Kurdish woman, was facing imminent execution before an apparent last-minute reprieve.

The Iranian Embassy in London said Ashtiani would no longer face death by stoning, according to Channel 4 News and The Guardian newspaper. A message seeking comment from the embassy was not immediately returned, and it was not immediately clear if Ashtiani still faced death by other means.
"According to information from the relevant judicial authorities in Iran, she will not be executed by stoning punishment," the embassy said in the statement reported by Channel 4 News and The Guardian.
Ashtiani's face, framed in a black chador, stared from the front page of The Times of London on Thursday, while The Guardian carried an interview with Ashtiani's children — 22-year-old Sajad and 17-year-old Farideh — who described the sentence as a nightmare. Protests are planned in front of the Iranian Embassy over the weekend.
Stoning is a "medieval punishment which has no role in the modern world", British Foreign Secretary William Hague told reporters Thursday. "If the punishment is carried out, it will disgust and appall the watching world," Hague said in a media conference with Turkey's foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu in London.
He appealed to Tehran to halt the planned execution.
Celebrities including Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, and Robert Redford have already signed on to the campaign to push for her release, according to The Times, which also quoted US Senator John Kerry and Howard Berman, the chairman of the House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee, as expressing their disgust at the sentence.
Even Lindsay Lohan publicised the case, becoming one of hundreds of Twitter users rallying the online world to Ashtiani's defence.
Under Iran's Islamic laws, adultery is the only capital offense punishable by stoning. A man is usually buried up to his waist, while a woman is buried up to her neck. Those carrying out the verdict then pelt the convict with stones until he or she dies.
Stoning was widely imposed in the years following the revolution, and even though Iran's judiciary still regularly hands down such sentences, they are often converted to fines. The last known stoning was carried out in 2008, although the government rarely confirms that such punishments have been meted out.
"It's possible that the numbers are much higher than has been reported," said Faraz Sanei, an Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch, one of several groups publicizing Ashtiani's case.
The rights group said she was first convicted in May of 2006 of having an "illicit relationship" with two men following the death of her husband — for which a court in Tabriz, in north-western Iran, sentenced her to 99 lashes. But later that year she was also convicted of adultery, despite having retracted a confession which she claims was made under duress.
That Ashtiani's plight has received unusually wide play might be attributable to the determined work of Germany-based activist Mina Ahadi as well as to the internet savvy of Ashtiani's lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaei, a prolific blogger, Sanei said.
In one of his recent posts, Mostafaei warned that his client could be executed at any time without notice, Sanei said.
Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, told reporters in the British capital that his country would raise the issue with Iran.

Sri Lanka army officers remanded over 'coup plot'

Many military supporters of the opposition have been arrrested

A Sri Lankan court has ordered that six army officers suspected of plotting to overthrow the government should remain in custody.

The officers appeared before Colombo Chief Magistrate Champa Janaki Rajaratne on Friday.
The government has accused one of the suspects of being involved in the assassination of Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickramathunga last year.
The six are all sympathetic to detained opposition leader Gen Sarath Fonseka.
He lost presidential elections in January to President Mahinda Rajapaksa and now faces possible military and civilian charges.
Accusations rejected
The authorities accuse Gen Fonseka of having worked with what they call anti-government forces, but no specific charges against him have been brought.
In a joint statement to the magistrate on Friday, all six suspects rejected the accusations against them and denied being involved in any crime.
Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) officials told the court that it was essential to keep them in custody while their investigations continued.
The court remanded the six until 26 March.
At least 53 supporters of Gen Fonseka, many of them serving or retired military officials, were arrested by police after he lost the 26 January presidential election.

Kashmir shutdown in protest at 'cover-up' of deaths

Protesters accuse security forces of killing the women

Protesters brought Indian-administered Kashmir to a standstill on Tuesday amid claims that a federal inquiry into the deaths of two women is a cover-up.

Locals allege the women, who died in the town of Shopian in May, were raped and murdered by security forces.

But on Monday India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) told the high court in Srinagar they had died by drowning.

The families of the women told the court that the CBI report was trying to protect the guilty.

The discovery of the women's bodies led to weeks of violent protests earlier this year.

'False reports'

Tuesday's protests shut shops across the Kashmir valley and brought traffic to a standstill, reports the BBC's Altaf Husain in Srinagar.

People in the Muslim-dominated valley believe the CBI report is a cover-up, our correspondent says.

One resident Mohammad Yusuf said: "How could two women drown at the same time in a canal which had a low water level?"

Afroz Hussain, another resident, said: "Why did [chief minister] Omar Abdullah repeatedly apologise to people for calling it a case of drowning in the beginning if he was convinced that the women had not been murdered?"

In its report presented to the high court on Monday, the CBI accused 13 people - six doctors, five lawyers and two civilians - of fabricating a false case.

The CBI report says the doctors gave false post-mortem reports and sent slides that had been tampered with for DNA examination.

It absolved four police officers arrested for destroying evidence, saying the charges against them had not been substantiated.

Campaigners told the high court the CBI had not recorded vital information provided by the relatives of the two women.

A separate judicial probe into the incident ruled that the "involvement of some agency of the police cannot be ruled out".

Exhumations

The bodies of Neelofar Jan, 22, and her 17-year-old sister-in-law, Ayesha, were found in the canal in Shopian on 30 May.

The women had gone missing the previous evening.

State authorities at first said the women had drowned, before admitting they had been raped and murdered.

Facing charges of a cover-up and with no-one brought to justice, the state government handed over the investigation to the CBI.

It had the bodies of the women exhumed in September in a fresh attempt to determine what happened to them.

Suu Kyi and American Convicted By Burmese Court

FILE - In this Nov. 9, 2007, file photo released by Myanmar News Agency, Myanmar's detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, meets with Relations Minister Aung Kyi, unseen, at the state guesthouse in Yangon, Myanmar. An American on trial with Suu Kyi was taken back to prison after a week in the hospital, making it likely the court would announce a verdict Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009, as scheduled, the defense lawyer and a government official said. (AP Photo/Myanma News Agency, File) (AP)

Opposition Leader Sentenced to Additional 18 Months

Jared Genser

Attorney for Aung San Suu Kyi
Tuesday, August 11, 2009; 1:30 PM

Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced Tuesday to an additional 18 months under house arrest on charges of breaching the terms of her previous incarceration by harboring an American tourist who swam across a lake bordering her villa and entered her heavily guarded property uninvited.

This Story

• Suu Kyi Verdict Douses Hope of Reform in Burma
• Verdict Reveals Burmese Regime Unbowed by Pressure
• In Burma, Carefully Sowing Resistance
• Q&A, Live: Suu Kyi and American Convicted By Burmese Court

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Jared Genser, attorney for Suu Kyi, was online Tuesday, Aug. 11, at 1:30 p.m. ET to discuss the case and the widespread international reaction from Great Britain, France, the European community, and the U.S.

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Jared Genser: Jared Genser: Hi everyone. I'm happy to be here. I'm a human rights lawyer in Washington, D.C., and serve a international counsel to Aung San Suu Kyi. My NGO, Freedom Now (www.freedom-now.org) was retained by a member of her family to represent her in mid-2006. In that context we have secured two judgments from the UN that her ongoing periods of house arrest are in violation of international law, and just filed a third petition today in response to her most recent conviction and sentence. And we have also engaged in substantial political and public relations advocacy on her behalf as well. I'm happy to answer any and all Burma-related questions.

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NW D.C.: What advice would you give to someone wanting to travel to Burma? I know various people who want to do day trips from Thailand, plus a couple government types who want to do semi-official 'missions' to build bridges with counterpart agencies in Burma. Would you consider this sinful, or not? Or depends on how its done?

Jared Genser: Well, the National League for Democracy (Aung San Suu Kyi and her political party) and other pro-democracy ethnic groups have discouraged tourism, particularly tourism for the sake of merely seeing the sites. My personal view is that if one is to go, they need to go with eyes wide open and with an interest in learning about the country and people. There are also ways to go to minimize expenditures that go into the pockets of the regime (e.g., staying at small guest houses rather than large government-run hotels). As for building bridges, I'm personally all for it -- and for all the humanitarian aid we can get into Burma. But one should work exclusively with international and local NGOs. If you work with the government, as has been widely reported, you get into a dicey balancing act where you have to judge whether the aid going in to people in need outweighs the aid skimmed off for the junta. I think that is a virtually impossible exercise.

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Arlington, Va.: Short of an invasion (which we know isn't going to happen) what can really be done from the outside? We have tried sanctions. We have tried all sorts of condemnations. Are the Chinese the biggest key/obstacle? Do the people inside Burma need to become so totally desperate that millions of them rise up? It all seems to hopeless. I saw Burma VJ the other night at then the Current TV report Laura Ling did on Burma over the weekend. It's so sad. Will nothing happen until Than Shwe and the rest die off? Is the next generation of dictators equally bad? Any chance of a coup from the lower ranks of the military?

Jared Genser: Bertil Linter, a Swedish journalist and lifelong Burma watcher and reporter recently published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal making that exact point. At the end of the day, the country is comprised of 47 million Burmese people who need to shape their own destiny. That said, Aung San Suu Kyi's political party and its ethnic group allies won 80%+ of the seats in the parliament in 1990 and have never been allowed to take office. Should the international community do nothing? We know what happens if we do nothing. I believe that we do have an obligation to stand in solidarity with the Burmese people who have asked for the support of the international community. There are no clear and easy answers. Engagement has been tried for 20 years, with 40+ visits of UN envoys, rapporteurs, and the Secretary-General. That has yielded little progress. Sanctions have been tried, but frankly only in a serious way since 2003, primarily by the US, but since 2007 more seriously by the EU, Canada, and Australia. But the bulk of trade comes from China, India, and ASEAN member states. As for your other questions, let me try to come back to them later. You asked a whole long list of difficult ones!

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Arlington, Va.: Doesn't keeping The Lady locked up just increase her power and moral authority? I wonder why, if they fear her so much, the junta allows her to live at all.

Jared Genser: I believe she is deeply feared by the junta, despite being a petite 5' tall and some 100 pounds, because she and her allies won more than 80 percent of the seats in the parliament in the 1990 elections, when the junta actually believed they would win in a landslide. Adding to her appeal is that her father is rightly viewed in Burma as the key actor who secured the country's freedom from British colonial rule, and was sadly assassinated right before Burma's independence in 1948. I agree that keeping her locked up as the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize Laureate only increases curiosity about her, her story, her situation, and that of her people. On the other hand, when she has been out of house arrest and been able to travel, tens of thousands of people have turned out at numerous stops merely to get a glimpse of her. This kind of mass movement that she can swiftly generate is what they fear most and the generals have watched the fall of the former Soviet satellites, color revolutions, etc. As for killing her, they actually tried that in 2003 -- with a government-sponsored mob in Depayin, which resulted in the murder of 70 of her supporters in her convey. She escaped with minor injuries. I don't think they've viewed killing her directly as a real option given the outcry that would result and the fact that their allies in the UN Security Council would likely have to stand aside in light of that outrage to allow serious action to be taken against them.

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Fairfax, Va.: How much influence will the U.N. judgments wield in the possibility of her release?

Jared Genser: Well, on the one hand, you might think not much at all. Indeed, there is no enforcement mechanism other than moral suasion, combined with political and public relations advocacy. On the other hand, despite being impervious in some ways to international pressure, the junta, and Gen. Than Shwe in particular, severely dislikes international criticism of its actions. Interestingly, the junta has repeatedly responded to our UN submissions (doing so is optional but encouraged) and has publicly defended itself in the government-published New Light of Myanmar. Our most recent UN judgment, which we released in March 2009, was actually pretty extraordinary, because it found that the junta was violating not only international law, but its own law too. It concluded that the junta could only detain her for up to five years under house arrest and that they had illegally detained her for a sixth year. The junta strenuously objected to this UN decision as interference in their internal affairs. But this was likely, at least in part, what prompted its need to find an alternative rationale (albeit tenuous) for continuing to detain her. Even if the American swimmer John Yettaw hadn't shown up on the scene, I believe there would have been some other pretextual excuse for finding a reason to keep her in custody, at least through the junta's 2010 scheduled elections that are designed to solidify their military rule.

_______________________

Washington, D.C.: "Should the international community do nothing?"

Why not, it's the tradition. North Korea, Iran, Congo, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Kurdistan, Tibet, etc.

It goes on and on. As long as China has a veto on the U.N. Security Council it isn't going to happen.

Jared Genser: Well, that is one approach. Having heard first-hand stories of the suffering of countless Burmese people, I personally have felt compelled to do what I can. You are correct that the UN Security Council is not exactly a bastion of vigorous action on a number of complex conflicts in the world. But at the same time, it is worth noting that all members of the P5 (China, Russia, US, UK, and France), who all retain a veto right, are regularly reassessing their strategic interests in the Security Council and also engaged in horse-trading on issues of greatest concern to them. Thus, we've seen that China, which initially strongly objected to even having Burma placed on the Security Council agenda, ultimately went along with two Presidential statements and a press statement from the Security Council which, among other things, called for the release of Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, urged open access for humanitarian aid, and urged meaningful dialogue leading to national reconciliation in the country. Has that solved the problem. Of course not. But the fact that China went from objecting to it being on the agenda at all to begrudgingly supporting these kinds of actions suggest their calculus can change -- such as what happened after the junta gunned down a dozen protestors in 2007 after the monks and activists conducted democratic marches. China even supported a referral of Sudan for investigation to the International Criminal Court despite many arguing for years it would never allow it to happen. Again, these are all small incremental steps. But unless the junta collapses overnight, that is about the best we have to work with.

_______________________

Washington, D.C.: How did you become her attorney?

Jared Genser: In 2005, I led a team producing a report entitled "Threat to the Peace: A Call for the UN Security Council to Act in Burma" for Vaclav Havel and Desmond Tutu. We then worked with them in lobbying to get Burma on the UN Security Council agenda for the first time, which happened in 2006. I had actually first gotten involved in Burma back in 2000, when I helped secure the release of a British national James Mawdsley who received a 17 year prison sentence in the country for handing out pro-democracy leaflets. I suppose that with the increasing attention that I got for these activities led to my coming to the notice of her family. And a member of her family asked me in 2006 to represent her.

_______________________

Arlington, Va.: How close do you think the junta was to collapse during the 2007 protests? They seemed to really be floundering for many days while the protests built. I think everyone expected a crackdown sooner than it happened. In the end they showed little restraint when killing and imprisoning the monks. There were reports at the time that Than Shwe fled or that the lower ranks of the military were ready to mutiny, but I don't know if that was just propaganda from the opposition or if that was anywhere close to happening.

Jared Genser: It is personally quite hard for me to say because I don't speak Burmese and the information that I got, like yours, has been all second-hand. That said, as the saying goes, the greatest wounds are self-inflicted. The massive increase (5-fold) in fuel prices imposed without warning by the junta (including gas, kerosine, etc) hit every Burmese person with limited means and made cooking their daily rice inordinately expensive. Given the people of the country also support the monks and temples and especially because those who were poorer kept more of their own money for basic needs, the support for the monks swiftly dried up. When combining the suffering of the starving people with the broad impact on the overall population, the monks felt compelled to stand up and say that the actions of the junta conflicted with their alleged Buddhist values. There is no doubt the junta was deeply afraid of seeing their own color revolution develop and once the protests grew beyond what they judged was an acceptable size, they felt compelled to violently crack down. I, too, heard reports of many of the soldiers refusing to shoot the monks and differences among generals about how vicious they were willing to be with the Burmese people. But at the end of the day, the soldiers were more afraid of the generals than the common people so again, sadly, the peaceful uprising was snuffed out by violence.

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Annandale, Va.: Who is propping up the junta?

Jared Genser: Interestingly, Burma is rich in natural resources -- especially oil/gas, timber, and gemstones. The junta has numerous state-owned enterprises that manage investments in these areas. Currently the biggest investors in the country are China, India, Thailand, Singapore, and several other ASEAN countries. Despite having some $5B in cash reserves currently hidden on the books (see the fascinating op-ed by Australian economist Sean Turnell in the Wall Street Journal from a week or two ago) and some $2-3B a year in oil/gas revenues, the country remains one of the most impoverished in SE Asia. This is because the junta spends (roughly) 25 percent of its GDP on the military and some 2 percent on health and education combined. Ironically, the junta pleads poverty with the international community and has been asking for $10B in aid after Cyclone Nargis. Yet few in the international community seem to demand that the junta begin to spend its own resources to promote the country's development. Ultimately, what enables the junta to remain in power are the weapons sold to it by China, but there are plenty of companies and countries prepared to invest in Burma, despite its appearance right at the bottom (something like 189 out of 190 on Transparency International's list of most corrupt countries).

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Washington, D.C.: Is she angry at the American who imposed on her and added 18 months to her sentence? Or was it inevitable that something would come up that the government would use to keep her in prison. If he didn't show up, certainly they would have found another way to keep her detained, no?

Jared Genser: My understanding is that she is not angry but rather understands full well that her detention has never had anything to do with whatever the most recent set of charges were, but rather are because of her popularity with the people and the 1990 election results.

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Arlington, Va.: Are there any other opposition leaders on the horizon inside Burma? Obviously she can't live forever. We know the election will be rigged next year but is there anyone who will run? Or will everyone just boycott?

Jared Genser: This is an ongoing challenge for the Burmese democracy movement. It is impossible to put ourselves in the shoes of those Burmese democrats inside the country. There are 2,100+ political prisoners in the country, which comprise the key leadership (and numerous levels down) of the NLD and ethnic groups. The imprisoned include elected MPs from the 1990 elections, journalists, political activists, the so-called '88 student generation which led the 1988 peaceful uprising, and countless others. Under such circumstances, it is no wonder that maintaining, developing, and expanding support for the democracy movement is virtually impossible inside the country. Over the next few days a number of the Burmese umbrella groups are meeting in Jakarta to issue a unity plan for how to deal with the junta. The main umbrella group, the National Coalition of the Union of Burma is led by someone named Maung Maung. And the formal government-in-exile, which is comprised of the 1990 elected MPs, is led by Dr. Sein Win, who also happens to be Aung San Suu Kyi's first cousin. Ultimately the Burmese democracy movement inside the country has struggled to survive, and while there is an active, diverse, and engaged Diaspora community of Burmese living in exile, achieving unity requires substantial ongoing effort.

As for the elections, right now, under the Constitution that was "adopted" in the flawed referendum and without input from the democracy movement, there is no real prospect for change. This is because the Constitution provides for a military veto over decisions of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches, excludes Aung San Suu Kyi and any former political prisoners (felons) from running for office, and precludes anyone who hasn't lived in the country for the last 20 years (e.g., was in exile) from running for office. The junta automatically gets 25 percent of the seats in the parliament and it takes an 80 percent vote to amend the Constitution. In other words, even if the NLD and their allies compete and win every available seat, they still will have no control over the government. Furthermore, the Constitution allows for the Executive to limit or even criminalize certain topics if raised in the Parliament, rendering the idea of running and speaking out an unpleasant prospect.

The only hope really is for the Constitution to be substantially amended. If that happens, the Burmese democracy movement has expressed a willingness to participate in a free and fair election.

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Harrisburg. Pa.: Is there any legal appeals process? Are you still continuing to serve as the attorney? What are your plans from this point on?

Jared Genser: Her domestic lawyers are looking at possible appeals. I'm not sure it is technically possible because the sentence was commuted. But it is irrelevant anyways. The judiciary isn't independent from the junta and so like the trial itself, the conclusion of an appeal is sadly pre-ordained.

Yes, I continue to serve as her international counsel. We filed a petition today before the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and will also continue political and public relations advocacy on her behalf until she is free.

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Jared Genser: Thanks everyone for participating in this chat! If you want to learn more or follow our activities, you can check out Freedom Now's web site at www.freedom-now.org. Thanks for your interest!

Jared

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washingtonpost.com: Freedom Now

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Editor's Note: washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions. washingtonpost.com is not responsible for any content posted by third parties.

Former AIG Chief to Pay $15 Million to Settle SEC Charges

FILE - In this June 18, 2009 file photo, former American International Group (AIG) Inc. CEO Maurice 'Hank' Greenberg enters Manhattan federal court in New York. The Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009, that Greenberg agreed to pay a $15 million fine to settle fraud charges. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, file) (Seth Wenig - AP)

Former American International Group chief executive Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg has agreed to pay $15 million to settle allegations by the Securities and Exchange Commission that he oversaw numerous improper accounting deals that for years deceptively inflated the insurance giant's bottom line.

In a civil complaint filed with a federal court in New York, the SEC charged that Greenberg and former chief financial officer Howard Smith created the false impression that AIG was consistently meeting or exceeding lofty earnings and growth targets from 2000 through 2005.

"Greenberg and Smith oversaw various improper transactions that presented a false financial picture and allowed AIG to claim success in meeting its performance goals," Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's enforcement division, said in a statement Thursday announcing the agreement.

The agency claimed that the two men were responsible for a series of sham insurance transactions that made it appear that AIG had legitimately bolstered its loss reserves, as well as efforts to mask losses by using offshore shell entities. The SEC accused Greenberg and Smith of making "false and misleading public statements" and "material omissions in quarterly reports," news releases and investor calls.

Greenberg, 84, headed AIG for nearly four decades and built it into one of the world's largest and most revered insurance companies, operating in more than 130 countries. But he was forced to step down in 2005 amid an accounting scandal that led to multiple state and federal investigations. After his departure, AIG was forced to restate years worth of earnings and pay hefty settlements to investigators.

Greenberg has consistently denied allegations that he acted unlawfully, and even as he agreed Thursday to the settlement, he neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.

"Mr. Greenberg appreciates the SEC's recognition that he personally should not be charged with any fraud," said a statement issued on behalf of Greenberg's investment fund, C.V. Starr & Co. "With these issues behind him, Mr. Greenberg looks forward to being able to concentrate on building for the future."

Smith, who also was ousted during the 2005 accounting scandal, agreed to pay a $1.5 million fine. He also will be prohibited from acting as an officer or director of any public company for three years, according to the SEC.

An attorney for Smith issued a statement noting that some of the transactions in the SEC complaint were nearly a decade old. "Although Mr. Smith was originally inclined to litigate this matter," he said, "resolving the SEC matter allows him to move forward with his life without the added legal costs and distraction of this lawsuit."

Tiptoeing around Sonia Sotomayor

Senate judiciary committee chairman Patrick Leahy swears in US supreme court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Photograp

When the controversial stand-up comedian Carlos Mencia hosted a regular cable TV show, a recurring gag was to have the actor Peter Boyle do dramatic readings of Mencia's hate mail. One memorable performance had Boyle come out and hold aloft a viewer's complaint about Mencia's racially-charged material.

"Carlos Mencia," Boyle thundered, "you're a racist spic!" With that off-color joke, Mencia was able to turn around allegations that his routines were racist by illustrating the bigotry of his critics.

As Republicans approach Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, which got underway in Washington DC on Monday, they have little chance of preventing her confirmation. The Democrats hold 60 Senate seats. Since the GOP effectively swore off judicial filibusters under George Bush, only 50 votes are needed to put Sotomayor on the Supreme Court.

But Republicans can use the hearings to highlight the least popular aspects of judicial liberalism, scoring points off President Obama and imposing a political cost on Democratic senators' yes votes. The most fertile ground concerns race-conscious affirmative action, which Sotomayor has defended. It was the policy at the heart of Ricci v DeStefano, a high-profile case on which Sotomayor's judgment was recently overruled by the Supreme Court.

With little public debate, Title VII has moved civil-rights laws toward eradicating employer practices with a "disparate impact" on protected minorities rather than outlawing intentional discrimination against individuals of all races. Sometimes, this means that the anti-discrimination laws themselves are used to discriminate on the basis of race. But the unwritten rule is that the discrimination cannot be too obvious, as it was in the case of the New Haven firefighters who saw their promotion exam results thrown out.

Sotomayor violated that rule when she not only sided against the New Haven firefighters, but tried to bury their complaint. She is also vulnerable on unfortunate comments she made about a "wise Latina" deciding cases differently than a white man, possibly due to "inherent physiological or cultural differences" between them.

Yet on the opening day, at least, Senate Republicans for the most part did not want to go there. Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who has said he will probably vote to confirm Sotomayor, told the judge on Monday, "Unless you have a complete meltdown, you're going to get confirmed." Graham took a shot at Obama's own votes against Republican nominees during his time in the Senate – "I can assure you that if I applied Senator Obama's standard to your nomination, I wouldn't vote for you" – but then promised not to apply Obama's "absurd, dangerous standard."

"Some of the things that have been said about Judge Sotomayor have been intemperate and unfair," said Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican who has previously chaired the Senate judiciary committee, by way of distancing himself from conservative criticisms of the nominee. Hatch is also considered likely to vote for Sotomayor.

But not everybody played nice in their opening statements. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the panel, stated bluntly that Sotomayor's "wise Latina" remarks were "shocking and offensive to me." "I will not vote for — no senator should vote for — an individual nominated by any president who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their own personal background, gender, prejudices, or sympathies to sway their decision in favor of, or against, parties before the court," Sessions declared.

"Judge Sotomayor has said that she accepts that her opinions, sympathies, and prejudices will affect her rulings. Could it be that her time as a leader of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, a fine organization, provides a clue as to her decision against the firefighters," Sessions continued. "It seems to me that ... Judge Sotomayor's empathy for one group of firefighters turned out to be prejudice against the others."

"Many of Judge Sotomayor's public statements suggest that she may, indeed, allow, and even embrace, decision-making based on her biases and prejudices," Senator Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican, said in reference to these concerns. "The factors that will influence her decisions apparently include her 'gender and Latina heritage' and foreign legal concepts that get her 'creative juices going."

Republicans nevertheless have reason to proceed down this path gingerly, as a group of conservative white men who seem overly preoccupied with race and gender while grilling a Hispanic woman risk charges of bigotry themselves. This is especially challenging since Republicans are trying to win over women and the growing Hispanic vote.

Without a strong attack on racial preferences, however, Republicans are left only with vague criticisms of judicial activism and legislating from the bench – criticisms judiciary committee Democrats stood ready to counter. Their newest member, Senator Al Franken of Minnesota, pointedly said that conservatives consider court decisions they disagree with "activism."

As the confirmation hearings move into questioning Sotomayor directly, the Republicans want to sound like champions of colour-blind justice under the law. The Democrats want people to listen to the GOP senators' questions and hear a dramatic reading by Peter Boyle.

h: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

To avoid tripping up over race and gender, Republicans are treading warily at the Sotomayor confirmation hearings

Sonia Sotomayor labelled "activist judge" at confirmation hearing

Judge Sonia Sotomayor

Republican senators have launched a sharp attack on the record of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, claiming she is an "activist judge" who would try to use her position to drive social change.

The criticism came at the start of a week-long confirmation hearing which could see her installed as the first Hispanic judge to sit on the highest US court in its 220-year history.

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate judiciary committee, said: "I believe our legal system is at a dangerous crossroads.

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"Down one path is the traditional American legal system, where judges impartially apply the law to the facts without regard to their own personal views.

"Down the other path lies a Brave New World where judges are free to decide what facts they choose to see."

In her opening remarks, Miss Sotomayor hit back, stressing her "fidelity to the law".

"The task of a judge is not to make the law – it is to apply the law. And it is clear, I believe, that my record in two courts reflects my rigorous commitment to interpreting the Constitution," she said.

Born to Puerto Rican parents in the Bronx, Miss Sotomayor's rise to the pinnacle of the legal edifice has been highlighted by President Barack Obama and her supporters as an "truly American story".

But Republican questions on Tuesday will focus on remarks she made in 2001 that a "wise Latina" with "richer life experiences" would reach a better decision in court than a white man.

Her defenders have observed that the comment should not be taken as judicial philosophy. Neutral observers, and some Republicans, have said that her decisions have demonstrated a sharp legal mind, respect for precedent combined albeit with liberal leanings.

Even Republicans have admitted that she is almost certain to be confirmed in a process which could take up to two weeks. With 12 years as an appeal court judge on the second circuit and six as a trial judge, she is one of the most experienced nominees in recent history.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee's chairman, warned her critics against any attacks based on race. He recalled resistance to the first black, Jewish, and Catholic Supreme Court nominees, noting "we are in a different era" and warning "let no one demean this extraordinary woman, her success," and her record as a judge.

"Unless you have a complete meltdown, you're going to get confirmed," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Sotomayor as the Senate Judiciary Committee began several days of hearings.

Latest AIG Drama: Ex-CEO Jets Stock to Bermuda

Former American International Group (AIG) Inc. CEO Maurice 'Hank' Greenberg enters Manhattan federal court, Thursday, June 18, 2009, in New York. AIG is in court trying to recoup money it claims was wrongly pocketed through stock sales by Greenberg.

Former CEO Greenberg Says in Court That He Had Company Stock Flown to Bermuda For Safe Keeping

The man who turned AIG into the world's largest insurance company told a court Wednesday that he sent a private jet to Bermuda loaded with company stock to prevent it from being seized.

The admission was the latest bit of drama in two days of testy testimony in a suit brought by AIG against Starr International, a private investment firm and one-time sister company of AIG run by Maurice "Hank" Greenberg who was ousted from AIG in 2005.
Greenberg, 84, spent nearly 40 years building AIG into the world's biggest insurer before his ouster four years ago amid investigations into accounting irregularities. AIG eventually collapsed and the U.S. government pumped in more than $180 billion to keep it afloat in the biggest such financial rescue ever.
On the stand in federal court in New York, it was clear Greenberg was still smarting from his abrupt removal as the company's CEO.
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On Wednesday, Greenberg told the federal court in New York he was "angry" and "unhappy" about his ouster, as AIG lawyers tried to draw links between Greenberg's leaving the company and the termination of a $4.3 billion retirement plan for AIG employees that had been controlled by Starr.
AIG accuses Greenberg, chairman of the privately held, Bermuda-based Starr, of illegally taking the stock.
"It was a reaction to the entire environment that was emerging between AIG and Starr International," Greenberg testified. "It was starting to get very ugly."
Greenberg, whose demeanor on the stand shifted from peevish to confrontational, said he was angered about suddenly losing his job at the company.
"Yes. It was sudden and abrupt....Yes, I was angry," he said when asked about his ouster.
The lead attorney for AIG, Theodore Wells, called Greenberg a hostile witness for giving curt responses to questions about documents related to the retirement program.
"Apparently," was the one-word answer Greenberg gave to a question about the stock.
"If you tell me so," Greenberg said in response to another question.
In one heated exchange Greenberg told Wells he was being obviously rhetorical when he told the retirement plan participants in 2005 that their stock would remain in trust for "a couple hundred years."

"When I said a couple of hundred years, I'm speaking to a group of people and trying to build their morale," Greenberg testified. "It's a motivating speech. A couple of hundred years is an exaggeration. Anybody who was there would recognize that that was simply a figure of speech and not a commitment."
Until the U.S. government's $180 billion bailout of AIG in September, Starr – and by extension Greenberg -- was the insurer's largest shareholder.
When the company became a casualty of the financial crisis, leading a government takeover, no one took as great a hit as Greenberg.
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In September, Just hours after the federal government announced it would provide AIG its first $85 billion loan secured by an 80 percent stake in the company in an effort to prevent its collapse, Greenberg appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" to decry the actions of the current board and to admit that he had lost much of what he had built over the course of four decades.
"I've lost my entire net worth, literally my entire net worth," Greenberg said. "I worked 40 years building the greatest insurance company in history, one that everyone in the world envied – who was in this industry."
Greenberg, who privately or through the companies he runs still owns a private jet, an office on Park Avenue and homes in New York City and Brewster, N.Y., likely lost 95 percent of his total assets, or somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 billion, analysts say.
"[Greenberg] is the largest shareholder in the company. Taken together, he and the companies he runs -- C.V. Starr and Starr International -- own 313 million shares of AIG combined," said Ben Silverman, director of research at Insiderscore, a company that tracks executive stock transactions, soon after the company was taken over.
AIG shares trade for $1.48 each today, compared with more than $70 in 2005.
Also in September, just days before the company collapsed, Greenberg settled a lawsuit filed by some AIG shareholders, including the Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana, over the same accounting irregularities that got him investigated – but never prosecuted – by the New York Attorney General.

Greenberg Defends Sale of A.I.G. Stock in Trust

Maurice R. Greenberg, the former chief of American International Group, arriving at federal court in New York on Tuesday.

Maurice R. Greenberg, the former chief executive of the American International Group, testified on Tuesday that he always had the right to disband the insurance company’s retirement plan for top performers and to remove its assets under certain conditions.

Mr. Greenberg, who helped create the plan four decades ago, said the retirement plan was designed, in effect, to self-destruct if A.I.G. were ever taken over or if the company ceased to perform well. He reiterated that he did not loot the plan, as the company now contends in its lawsuit.
“There was nothing that said there was an obligation to continue it indefinitely,” Mr. Greenberg said, appearing as an adverse witness in the first full day of testimony.
A.I.G. has said Mr. Greenberg improperly removed company stock worth $4.3 billion from the plan in 2005, in his capacity as chairman of a private company called Starr International.
The proceeds were invested in new insurance enterprises, some of which now compete with A.I.G., according to Theodore Wells, the lead lawyer for the company. In his opening statement on Monday, Mr. Wells told the jury that by removing the stock from the trust, Mr. Greenberg stuck the company with the bills for its retirement plan.
Mr. Wells told the jury that Mr. Greenberg acted because he was angry about having been “kicked out of A.I.G.” in 2005. Within weeks, Mr. Wells said, Mr. Greenberg sent a corporate jet from Bermuda, where Starr International has its main offices, to New York, to retrieve the stock.
“Totally irresponsible,” Mr. Wells told the jury.
Time and again during Tuesday’s testimony, Mr. Greenberg was presented with his own words about the trust, and challenged on why they seemed to conflict with the facts.
But again and again, Mr. Greenberg rebutted the accusations, saying his accusers were taking snippets of his speeches or quoting old documents out of context.
Jurors watched videotapes, for example, of Mr. Greenberg’s speeches to top managers, in which he told them the plan had been funded so generously it might never run out of shares. That seemed to suggest that the retirement plan would be in place indefinitely, Mr. Wells said. But Mr. Greenberg said that he often gave speeches extemporaneously, and no one would expect them to lay out every aspect of the retirement plan, like legal documents.
“This was a motivating speech,” he said. “This was an overview. It was not intended to give you every detail.”
Mr. Greenberg was also asked about a letter he wrote to a reporter at Fortune magazine in 1998, after she wrote an article describing A.I.G. as being owned by “a shadowy offshore company.” Mr. Greenberg said he felt compelled to clarify the purposes of Starr International, or SICO.
“You wrote that the voting shareholders of SICO were ‘fiduciaries for future generations of A.I.G. managers,’ ” said Mr. Wells. “Now, that letter was not a motivational speech, was it?”
Mr. Greenberg agreed that it was not a motivational speech but said it was not an important letter, either. He said it was written by a public relations official, and he had merely “scrawled” his signature on it.
“The statement by itself is not complete,” he said. “The topic is too complex to limit it to one phrase.”
Mr. Greenberg and his lawyers contend that no “compensation trust” as described by A.I.G. ever existed.
By Mr. Greenberg’s description, the big block of A.I.G. shares financing the retirement plan would instantly revert to a charity affiliated with Starr International if someone tried to take control of the company. The trust had several purposes, fending off corporate raiders among them, he said.
Participants in the retirement plan would still, upon retirement, be able to receive the shares allocated to them until the raid, but at that point they would get no more.
The jury also heard on Tuesday from an A.I.G. executive, Terri Austin, who said she had been a participant in the retirement plan for 10 years, until it was discontinued in 2005. She said that when she received letters signed by Mr. Greenberg welcoming her into the elite plan, some were written on A.I.G. letterhead, and others on Starr International letterhead.
The distinction matters because Mr. Greenberg and his lawyers say the retirement plan belonged to Starr International, not to A.I.G.
Ms. Austin recalled going to meetings of plan participants where Mr. Greenberg said the plan assets “would be held in trust for you,” and called it “unlikely that we would run out of shares to fund the above plan for decades, if ever,” implying that there was a permanent compensation trust.
The jurors are only expected to decide one of the issues in the case: whether Starr International committed “conversion” under Mr. Greenberg’s direction, or improperly used assets for other purposes than they were intended. One juror has been dismissed because he did not speak English well enough to understand the complex issues involved.
The other issue in the case, whether there was a breach of a trust, will be decided by Judge Jed S. Rakoff.
The judge has ruled out any discussion of last year’s bailout of A.I.G., saying it could prejudice the jury. Most of the events being described in the case occurred either in 2005 or in the late 1960s, when Starr International and A.I.G. were re-established in much of their present form.
The case was being held in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Obama sure Sotomayor would restate 2001 comment

AP – Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor smiles as President Barack Obama applauds, Tuesday, May 26, …

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Friday personally sought to deflect criticism of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, who finds herself under intensifying scrutiny for saying in 2001 that a female Hispanic judge would often reach a better decision than a white male judge. "I'm sure she would have restated it," Obama flatly told NBC News, without indicating how he knew that.
The quote in question from Sotomayor has emerged as a rallying call for conservative critics who fear she will offer opinions from the bench based less on the rule of law and more on her life experience, ethnicity and gender. That issue is likely to play a central role in her Senate confirmation process.
Obama also defended his nominee, saying her message was on target even if her exact wording was not.
"I think that when she's appearing before the Senate committee, in her confirmation process, I think all this nonsense that is being spewed out will be revealed for what it is," Obama said in the broadcast interview, clearly aware of how ethnicity and gender issues are taking hold in the debate.
The president's damage control underscored how the White House is eager to stay on message as the battle to publicly define Sotomayor picks up.
Obama's top spokesman, Robert Gibbs, told reporters about Sotomayor: "I think she'd say that her word choice in 2001 was poor."
Gibbs, however, said he did not hear that from Sotomayor directly. He said he learned it from people who had talked to her, and he did not identify who those people were. Sotomayor herself has made no public statements since her nomination became official Tuesday and was not reachable for comment.

A veteran federal judge, Sotomayor is poised to be the first Hispanic, and the third woman, to serve on the Supreme Court.
She said in 2001: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." The remark was in the context her saying that "our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."
Sotomayor's comments came in a lecture, titled "A Latina Judge's Voice," that she gave in 2001 at the law school of the University of California, Berkeley.
After three days of suggesting that reporters and critics should not dwell on one sentence from a speech, the White House had a different message Friday.
"If you look in the entire sweep of the essay that she wrote, what's clear is that she was simply saying that her life experiences will give her information about the struggles and hardships that people are going through, that will make her a good judge," Obama said in the broadcast interview.
Sotomayor appears headed for confirmation, needing a majority vote in a Senate, where Democrats have 59 votes. But beyond the final vote, White House officials are pushing for a smooth confirmation, not one that bogs down them or their nominee. Plus, Obama wants a strong win, not a slim one.
Obama told NBC that part of the job of a Supreme Court justice is to stand in somebody else's shoes and that Sotomayor will do that. "That breadth of experience, that knowledge of how the world works, is part of what we want for a justice who's going be effective," Obama said.
More than one line in the 2001 speech has helped drive the debate over Sotomayor's judgment.
She also said, for example: "Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see."
"My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas in which I am unfamiliar," she said. "I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage."
At the time Sotomayor gave the speech, she was in the same job she is now, a federal appeals court judge. She said then she was reminded daily that her decisions affect people and that she owes them "complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives."
"I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage," she added, "but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate."
In announcing Sotomayor as his choice, Obama said he wanted a judge who would "approach decisions without any particular ideology or agenda, but rather a commitment to impartial justice." But he also called her life experience essential, saying she had an understanding of "how ordinary people live."
Next week, Sotomayor will begin face-to-face meetings with senators as the confirmation process begins to take shape.

Who are Sudan's Jem rebels?

Jem claims to have as many as 35,000 armed fighters in the western Darfur region [Gallo/Getty]

The Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) is the most powerful anti-government faction involved in the Darfur conflict in Sudan.
Jem leaders claim they have as many as 35,000 well-armed fighters in the western Darfur region of Sudan that borders Chad.
On May 10, 2008, Jem fighters launched the first rebel attack on the Sudanese capital Khartoum – an event that marked Jem out as the major anti-government faction in Darfur.
The rebels intended to topple the government and were only defeated once they had already reached the outskirts of Omdurman – one of three towns that comprise the capital city.
The group was founded in 2000 following the publication of The Black Book: Imbalance of Power and Wealth in the Sudan. The book was authored by a number of Jem fighters, including Khalil Ibrahim Muhammad, the group’s leader.
While espousing an Islamist ideology, Jem members believe that northern Sudanese Arabs are disproportionately represented within the Khartoum government and political elite, leaving southern Africans and western Arabs disenfranchised and impoverished.
"The northern Nile elites are monopolising 95 per cent of the power and wealth of Sudan, while the rest of us, who make up 38 million people in 24 states, are holding only five per cent of the power and wealth in Sudan. Obviously, this is an imbalance," Abu Bakr Hamid Noor, one of the Black Book authors, has said.
'Fight to save'
Jem fighters claim they are fighting to save Sudan, saying current inequalities will push the southern Sudanese to opt for independence and so lead to the eventual destruction of the country.
Instead, Jem leaders are calling for the creation of a new country they refer to as the United Regions of Sudan which would be led by a rotating presidency, giving all six Sudanese regions a term in office.
However, while it is true Jem is the only multi-ethnic faction in Darfur – the other two groups are comprised of the Fur tribe in the case of Abdelwahid’s Sudan Liberation Army or the Zahawa in the case of Minni Minnawi’s Sudan Liberation Army – critics say Jem is not the inclusive "rainbow of tribes" it claims to be.
Most Jem members, including its leader, are from the Zaghawa tribe whose people straddle the Chad-Sudan border.
The Khartoum government, led by President Omar al-Bashir, alleges the movement gets support from Idriss Deby, president of Chad, and the Zaghawa-dominated Chadian military - something Jem strongly denies.
"This is rubbish. Actually the Zaghawa are a minority in Jem... Chad is not supporting the Jem... we want them to help us but so far we didn't get any help from them," Khalil Ibrahim has insisted.
However, even without direct military aid, Jem fighters appear to move freely across the border and its ability to use Chad as a base for retreat and resupply has given it a decisive edge in the Darfur conflict.
Heightening distrust
Khartoum's distrust of Jem has been heightened because the rebel group maintains close links to the former National Islamic Front leader Hassan al-Turabi, who originally backed al-Bashir's 1989 coup that saw the overthrow of Sadeq al-Mahdi's government.
Al-Turabi, once an ally, advocated sharing power with southern Africans and western Arabs, and appealed to the government to elect John Garang, former leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, and current SPLM leader Salva Kir, as president to answer claims of marginalisation by southern Sudanese.
After al-Turabi attempted to introduce legislation limiting presidential powers, al-Bashir dissolved parliament, declared a state of emergency and removed al-Turabi and his supporters from government.
Khartoum has also accused Jem of being involved with an alleged coup plot the government claims was masterminded by al-Turabi.
In the event southern Sudan votes for independence in polls scheduled for 2011, Jem says it will abandon the national project and break away too. In doing so, they have threatened to seize all the land west of the Nile including Omdurman, Darfur and Kordofan.
"This part is over 50 per cent of the land of Sudan, this is our region and we can establish a country on that land," Dr Khalil Ibrahim told Al Jazeera in early 2009.
After years of refusing to attend peace talks with Khartoum, Jem finally signed a goodwill agreement at talks brokered by Qatar at the beginning of 2009.
However, it soon fell apart after Omar al-Bashir expelled some western development and aid groups from Darfur when the International Criminal Court in the Hague issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with alleged war crimes committed in Darfur.
Jem withdrew its support for the accord until, it said, Khartoum reinstated the aid groups.
On May 7, 2009, the Sudanese government finally resumed talks with Jem, again under Qatari supervision, following a reconciliation summit between Chad and Sudan also hosted by Qatar prompted by a Chadian rebel group attack on the Njamena, the capital of Chad.
Chad, in turn, has accuses Khartoum of supporting the attack, and observers believe the possibility of a retaliatory offensive by Jem - launched from the Chadian border - against the Sudanese army cannot be ruled out.
Analysts warn if that happens, the Darfur conflict will become deadlier and even more difficult to solve.

Iran executes woman for alleged murder committed as a juvenile

Delara Darabi made a tearful call early on Friday to her parents Photo: Amnesty International

Delara Darabi knew the end was close when she made a panic-filled call to her mother from prison to say that she could see the hangman's noose from her window.

The Iranian artist was executed on Friday for a murder allegedly committed when she was a juvenile and for which she retracted her brief confession, claiming she was covering up for her boyfriend.
The prison authorities hanged Miss Darabi, 23, even though the head of Iran's judiciary granted her a two-month stay of execution on April 19 amid international outrage over her case. They also did not give her lawyer the required 48 hours notice.

Horrific new details have emerged of her last desperate plea for help from Rasht prison as jail guards came to lead her away.
Miss Darabi made a tearful call early on Friday to her parents to say she could see the gallows and noose, according to media reports from Tehran.
"Mother they are going to execute me, please save me," she pleaded. But a prison official then grabbed the phone and told her distraught mother: "We are going to execute your daughter and there's nothing you can do about it."
The execution of a young woman whose case has become an international cause célèbre is a further damaging blow to President Barack Obama's attempts to thaw US relations with the Islamic regime. Roxana Saberi, an American-Iranian journalist, is on hunger strike in a Tehran prison after being convicted of espionage in a show trial last month.
Miss Darabi's case gained widespread attention after moving paintings and drawings that she made in her prison cell were shown around the world. She developed her talent as a painter behind bars.
Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen are the only countries to execute people for crimes committed when they are under 18. Miss Darabi was 17 when she admitted killing her 58-year-old uncle in a burglary in 2003 but she quickly retracted the confession, saying she had taken the blame to save her boyfriend.
Amnesty International, the human rights group that campaigned vigorously to save Miss Darabi, led the condemnation.
"Amnesty International is outraged at the execution and particularly at the news that her lawyer was not informed," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy chief for the Middle East and North Africa.
"This appears to have been a cynical move on the part of the authorities to avoid domestic and international protests which might have saved Delara Darabi's life.
"This indicates that even decisions by the Head of the Judiciary carry no weight and are disregarded in the provinces."
The Iranian authorities said that Miss Darabi confessed to the murder because she believed she would be pardoned as the crime was committed when she was a minor. But her lawyer said that new forensic evidence and the explanation for her confession cleared her, but the court declined to hear the testimony.
"Amnesty International does not consider her trial to have been fair, as the courts later refused to consider new evidence which the lawyer said would have proved she could not have committed the murder," Mr Sahraoui added.
Iran has executed at least 42 juvenile criminals since 1990, including seven in 2007, according to human rights groups. Iran says it only carries out the death penalty when a prisoner reaches the age of 18.
Iran's existing penal code holds a nine-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy to be legally responsible if involved in crime.
Capital offences in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, apostasy, blasphemy, serious drug trafficking, repeated sodomy, adultery or prostitution, treason and espionage.
Iran stepped up its use of the death penalty last year in what it says is a bid to improve security in society.

Iran execution provokes outrage

Ms Darabi's case was brought to the world's attention by her paintings

Human rights groups have protested against the execution on Friday of a young Iranian woman for a murder committed when she was 17 years old.
Amnesty International said it was outraged by Delara Darabi's hanging and that she did not get a fair trial.
The head of Iran's judiciary had recently granted a two-month stay of execution but her lawyer says this was disregarded by the prison authorities.
Ever since her confession Ms Darabi, an artist, had said she was innocent.
She said she had taken the blame to save her boyfriend.
Her case received international attention after dramatic paintings and drawings created in her cell were seen around the world.
'Save me'
The head of the Iranian judiciary recently granted a two-month stay of execution.
But according to her lawyer this order was simply disregarded by the prison authorities, who provided no notice of the execution.

Ms Darabi's case attracted attention around the world
The BBC's Jon Leyne in Tehran says that early on Friday morning Delara Darabi made a desperate phone call to her parents, saying she could see the hangman's noose.
"Mother they are going to execute me, please save me," she said, before a prison official took the phone away and said: "We are going to execute your daughter and there's nothing you can do about it."
Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty's deputy chief for the Middle East and North Africa, said that the execution was a cynical move to avoid international protests.
"Amnesty International is outraged at the execution of Delara Darabi, and particularly at the news that her lawyer was not informed," she said.
"Amnesty International does not consider her trial to have been fair, as the courts later refused to consider new evidence which the lawyer said would have proved she could not have committed the murder," a statement by the group said.
The statement added that Iran had executed 42 juvenile offenders since 1990, in disregard of international law.