An Iranian man was flogged 55 times after a Friday prayer leader filed a complaint against him.
Rouhullah Barzin, a baker, was flogged for writing a post critical of the Friday prayer leader of Cheram, Nourullah Afshar, and “refusing to apologize” to him.
Mr. Barzin was sentenced to 55 lashes after Nourullah Afshar, the local representative of the regime’s Supreme Leader in Cheram, filed a complaint against him.
The court ruling was upheld by the appeals court of the Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province and carried out on Saturday, June 6.
In an interview with the state-run daily Tabnak, Nourullah Afshar considered the implementation of the flogging sentence part of his civil rights and said that that he did not take back his complaint because the “the young man refused to apologize”.
“According to the laws of the Islamic Republic, when a person carries out numerous insults and is not willing to apologize, what should (his punishment) be?” he said implying that the flogging punishment was just.
Nourullah Afshar, the Friday prayer leader and head of the Charam’s Headquarters for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice Headquarters, had previously demanded during his sermons that several other local officials be flogged.
Afshar had demanded during his sermons that several other local officials be flogged.
According to reports some local officials tried to intervene to prevent the flogging but Nourallah Afshar insisted on carrying out the sentence.
As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Iran is legally obliged to forbid torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment. But the Iranian authorities continue to allow such punishments and to justify them in the name of protecting religious morals.
Flogging is used as a punishment for dozens of offences in Iran. Assault and theft are among them, but so are adultery, defamation, intimacy between unmarried people and ‘breaches of public morals’.
Furthermore, the regime regularly hands out flogging sentences to protesters and dissidents.
In early June, the Iranian regime lashed a Tehran labor activist. A Tehran Revolutionary Court had previously sentenced Rasoul Taleb Moghaddam, a member of the Sherkate Vahed Tehran Bus Union, to 74 lashes, two years of prison, two years of exile to the northeastern province of Southern Khorasan and a two-year ban on membership in groups and using his cellphone.
