IRAN: PRISONER CONVICTED OF MURDERING PROMINENT CLERIC AND CHILD ABUSER HANGED

December 5, 2018:

A prisoner convicted of murdering a prominent cleric who had allegedly sexually abused him when he was a minor, was hanged on 1 December 2018 morning at Rasht Central Prison in northern Iran.
According to the IHR sources, Hossein Esmailpour was a student at a religious school.
He was convicted of murdering Fakhri Langaroudi with the complicity of two of his friends on September 15, 2014.
The clergyman, who had a prominent position at the religious school, had allegedly sexually abused Hossein over a period of several years since Hossein was 14 years old.
The whole judicial process leading to  Hossein’s death sentence lasted four months, which is very short to deal with such a complicated case.
Hossein’s father had previously told IHR, “we did not have a chance to prove us in the court, because the victim was a clergyman and he had an influential family. Everything was for them and the court did not listen to us… Finally, the judge issued the death sentence in three or four months and then the Supreme Court upheld the verdict.”