One charm offensive that Iran can use, but will never use, is abolition of death penalty. -- Yoshie
<http://www.ndtv.com/morenews/showmorestory.asp?slug=Iran+hangs+four+Iranian+Arab+separatists&id=99941#> Iran hangs four Iranian Arab separatists Associated Press Thursday, January 25, 2007 (Tehran): Iranian authorities on Wednesday hanged four Arab separatists convicted of bombings, which killed dozens of civilians in southern Iran. Both the ISNA and Fars semi-official news agencies reported that the four Iranian Arab separatists were hanged in a prison in Ahvaz, 850 kilometres southwest of Tehran. Earlier in January, the New York-based Human Rights Watch had urged Iran to rescind the death sentences of the men and retry the defendants before courts that meet international fair trial standards. The convicts were part of a larger group of Arabs arrested in 2005 and 2006 in the oil-rich southwestern Khuzestan province, close to the border with Iraq. They were charged in connection with the January 2006, June and October 2005 bombings that had killed 23 people and wounded dozens more in the provincial capital of Ahvaz. The blasts appeared to have been linked to unrest among Arab Iranians, who amount to less than 3 per cent of the national population and live mostly in Khuzestan. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had blamed "the occupiers of Iraq" - a reference to the US and Great Britain - for supporting the bombers. An Iranian Arab insurgent group, known as the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz, had claimed responsibility for the blasts. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
