20 February 2006 :

a press conference took place at Hands Off Cain headquarters in Rome highlighting human rights violations in Iran and the case of Nazanin, the minor sentenced to death after being charged with killing one of the men who had attempted to rape her. The conference saw the presentation of the appeal to save Nazanin, which asks the United Nations and the European Union to work in bringing about respect in Iran for the life of its citizens and to assure the right to freedom and democracy. For Hands Off Cain the death penalty in Iran is first of all a battle for the affirmation of human rights and the constitution of a democratic state. Commencing with the plight of Nazanin, HOC denounces Iran for its disregard even for the most fundamental of human rights, particularly with relation to women.
At least eight minors were hanged in the county in 2005 in direct violation of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child. “Minors continue to be hanged and women stoned to death,” stated Elisabetta Zamparutti, editor of the Hands Off Cain Report: “The Death Penalty Worldwide”. “Iran, which denies these executions internationally, is a regime with two facets: for this we are appealing to the international community to act to put an end to these appalling violations”. “We made this appeal,” said MEP Emma Bonino, “Not only due to the ghastly nature of these cases, but because we believe we should support those democratic groups in Iran which haven’t got any political say. Europe focuses all its attentions on Iran’s nuclear program and this shows the Iranian people that it is not interested in what happens to them.”
As well as the appeal signed by various personalities, Hands Off Cain also presented its dossier: The Death Penalty and More in the Mullahs’ Regime “Iran is a country of enormous capabilities,” explained Khaled Fouad Allam, professor of Muslim sociology at Trieste University, “But also great contradictions. I would define its democracy as totalitarian: there are women who drive busses and teach at universities but the regime’s ideology conjugates its political agenda with its religious one. The government is the problem because the population aspires to something completely different”. Another bleak chapter is the clampdown on press freedom, expounded on by Iranian journalist Ahmad Rafat, spokesman for the initiative for freedom of expression in Iran.
Rafat highlighted the ‘extrajudicial executions’ and in particular the ‘fake suicides’, an issue related to recent events surrounding seven journalists from the Iranian publication 'Tamaddon Hormozgan', arrested following the publication of an article satirising the Islamic revolution. According to prison authorities, the 19 year old author of the article, Elham
Froutan, had already attempted suicide twice but was saved by the intervention of the guards. Many, however, believe that the events are just a pretext: the executions of other journalists have in the past been defined as suicide by judicial authorities. Such was the case with Zahra Kazemi, the Canadian photo reporter of Iranian origin who died in Evin prison due to the abuse she was submitted to.