Iranian of the Day

New York Times: In an unusually bold public request, families of three antigovernment protesters who died after beatings at Iran’s notorious Kahrizak prison have demanded the prosecution of high-ranking officials responsible for running the extralegal detention center. The families, in a letter to Iran’s judiciary published widely in Iranian media, stated that they were prepared to spare the lives of two prison officers who were convicted of murder, under the Islamic legal provision of ghesas, which grants the families of murder victims the right to either request or forgo the death penalty for the killers. Instead, the families called for the punishment of the officers’ supervisors. “We do not gain pleasure from revenge nor spilling the blood of the puppets of those who have broken the law,” the letter of the three families reads, referring to the two unnamed individuals sentenced to death in closed-door trials for beating detainees to death >>>