2007: Not Sina Paymard, saved by a flute
July 18th, 2008 Headsman
On this date one year ago, a teenager who saved himself with a flute cheated Iran’s hangman by the narrowest of margins.
Sina Paymard had had the hemp about his throat the previous fall for murdering — at the tender age of 16 — a drug dealer in a pot buy gone bad.
The bipolar young musician’s last request was to play the ney (a Persian flute), and in a feat fit for legend, he played so movingly that the family of the victim reprieved him.
This power under Islamic sharia law comes with a price: the reprieve bought time for the families to negotiate alternative financial compensation known as diyeh. Come July, the lad’s family was still $90,000 short, and he was shifted to Tehran’s Evin prison to do the whole thing over again.
Sina’s new execution date received worldwide attention:
… helping them scrape together enough from donors (”notably a substantial donation from a university lecturer”) to make good his escape.
Such are the vicissitudes of the Iranian judiciary that Paymard went from all but dancing on air twice to outright liberty: he’s a free man today, or was as of a few months ago.
Though things worked out for Sina Paymard, other juvenile offenders continue to face the ultimate sanction in Iran — virtually the last outpost of the practice on the globe. Earlier this month, StopChildExecutions.com detailed 138 Iranian prisoners condemned for crimes committed as children; Iran has executed at least two such prisoners this year.
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Entry Filed under: 21st Century, Artists, Capital Punishment, Children, Common Criminals, Crime, Death Penalty, Diminished Capacity, Execution, Hanged, Iran, Last Minute Reprieve, Lucky to be Alive, Murder, Not Executed, Pardons and Clemencies, Public Executions, Ripped from the Headlines
Tags: 2007, blood money, diyeh, flute, july 18, musical instruments, musicians, ney, sharia, sina paymard
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