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.
On this day..
- 1980: Winfried Baumann - 2020
- 1743: The Black Watch mutineers - 2019
- 1726: Franz Laubler, Hermann Joachim Hahn's murderer - 2018
- 1888: Two in New Jersey, by father and son hangmen - 2017
- 1741: Othello, Doctor Harry, and five other New York slaves - 2016
- 1707: John Whittingham - 2015
- 1801: Chloe - 2014
- 2003: Lehlohonolo Bernard Kobedi - 2013
- 1936: Virgilio Leret, the first shot in the Spanish Civil War - 2012
- 1300: Gerard Segarelli, Apostolic Brethren founder - 2011
- 1943: Eight from the Krasnodar Trials - 2010
- 1865: Chief Ahan of the Tsilhqot’in - 2009
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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