PERSIAN CRIMINALS.

Colonist, Volume LIV, Issue 13277, 30 November 1911, Page 4

PERSIAN CRIMINALS.

M. Ponafidino, a consular officer who has spont many years in Persian territory, states that a male subject of the Shah may not be executed for the murder of a mero woman unless tho victim's friends nro prepared to pay a handsome sum to his relatives. In ono instance a woman wns murdered by her husband's steward.. Tho husband promptly paid half tho steward's "bleod price" to tho man's relations, and the steward, who had thus been reduced to the value of half a man, equal to ono whole woman, was legally executed. It follows that a man who has killed two women may be sentenoed to death, but if six men join forces to kill one woman tho share, of responsibility assumed by oach will bo almost negligible. Nobody can be punished unless the victim's relatives are very wealthy people indeed. The criminal code in Persia is brutally severe. "Many times within the last ten years," says M. Pouafidine, "I have seen headless bodies lying in the public squaro of the large cities, or the executioner leading a criminal whose severed hand lay in the hat in which ho collected money, or leading a thief by a string passed through the nostrils." The removal of a hand is the ordinary punishment for burglary, but a woman found guilty of this offence is granted special treatment. A heavy beam is dropped on her hand so that the bonos may be shattered. If a woman is ordered to be beaten, she is placed in a large bag before the rod •is applied, in order that there may bo no danger of any offence to her modesty. Tho consiuV.r official himself has had the unpleasant experience of being almost struck, while on his morning rido, by the flying fragments of a criminal who had been blown from the muzzle of a gun.