Two armed robbers hanged
TEHRAN, Sept 22 (AFP) - Two convicted armed robbers were hanged in public
Wednesday for a shock daylight heist in Iran's holy city of Qom which left
seven people dead, state radio said.
The two men, Shahryar Jabari and Abolfazl Khorami-Nik, were found guilty
of organizing last month's robbery in a Qom shopping gallery which also
left several people wounded.
Six accomplices received jail sentences from a Qom court, state radio
said without detailing the jail terms.
The masked gunmen opened fire when a shopkeeper started yelling at them
as they tried to walk casually away after heisting gold and cash worth
some 30,000 dollars.
They then attacked shoppers with knives after emptying their weapons
into the crowd.
The head of Qom's main pilgrimage site, the Massumeh mausoleum, was
also killed in the attack which occurred just hours after the last eclipse
of the millennium on August 11.
Daylight armed robberies are a rare occurrence in Iran, particularly
in the main Shiite Moslem pligrimage cities of Qom and Mashhad. Iranian
law prescribes the death penalty for armed robbery.
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