Public hanging in the ‘Behesht’ (paradise) park of Khomeinishahr, Iran. The men, identified as Abbas, 24, Rajab Ali, 23, Asghar, 20, and Mansour, 25, had been arrested and convicted in connection with a rape of several women earlier in the summer in a garden outside Khomeinishahr. Public execution, such as hanging, is one of the Islamic punishments aimed at preventing such crimes as rape and murder and occasionally fraud. Official numbers for execution by hanging in Iran do not exist, but the country is alleged to have the second-highest execution rate in the world after China.

Ebrahim Noroozi