posted on August 17, 2001 11:29:06 AM new
A serial killer traps and murders prostitutes. Scarier still, some Iranian conservatives think he’s a hero
By Christopher Dickey and Maziar Bahari
NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL
Aug. 20 issue — The prostitutes’ bodies are thrown on Iran’s roadsides, or more often in open sewers. They are wrapped in their long, black chadors, the cloth knotted top and bottom to form a makeshift body bag. In every case, the killer has used a scarf to strangle his victim. Iran’s newspapers call the cases “the Spider Killings,” because the victims appear to be drawn like flies into the murderer’s web. Their swaddled corpses resemble trapped insects awaiting their doom. It has been a year since the first bodies were discovered—in Mashhad, Iran’s holiest city. To date, there have been 21.
WHO IS THIS SPIDER? One suspect recently confessed to 16 of the murders. But the mystery—and the horror—extend far beyond the individual killer or killers. Many hard-line supporters of the regime have publicly cheered the murder spree, which last month claimed two new victims in Tehran, as a moral cleanup campaign. “Who is to be judged?” demanded the conservative newspaper Jomhuri Islami. “Those who look to eradicate the sickness [like the killer] or those who stand at the root of the corruption [like his victims]?” Such comments, in turn, have fueled suspicions that the killer or killers are not acting alone. All the victims have arrest records—for prostitution and drug use, according to Iranian newspapers—leading some Iranians to wonder if the Spider had official help in identifying his targets. For the moderate majority of Iranians, that may be the most terrifying aspect of the crimes: they see themselves confronted not only by a serial killer but by a pervasive system of zealous cruelty and abuse.
Revolutionary Iran has a long record of vigilante attacks on students, intellectuals and politicians who embarrassed the regime. But the government of reformist President Mohammed Khatami, first elected in 1997, was supposed to end all that. Khatami promised more freedoms and an end to the regime’s own lawlessness. In 1999 some intelligence officials were arrested and convicted for their role in the serial killing of liberal writers and opposition activists. But Khatami, despite his landslide re-election in June, has looked ever weaker in battles with hard-liners.
Just last week conservatives held up Khatami’s Inauguration until Parliament guaranteed them two open seats on the powerful Guardian Council. At his swearing-in Khatami warned, “The worst threat against Islam is violent actions in the name of religion.”
The main suspect in the Spider case is Saeed Hanaei, a 39-year-old construction worker with a background of mental illness and a criminal record. Police arrested him only last month—a few days after female members of Parliament demanded that Iran’s intelligence chief take action. Hanaei was angry, he declared in a jailhouse confession with the local press on July 27, because a cabdriver had mistaken his own wife for a prostitute. So he invited his prey, one by one, to his house in a working-class neighborhood while his wife and three children were away saying their prayers. But one woman “had long nails and scratched my hands,” he said. “She punched me in the stomach and got away.” Eventually she led police to his door.
Hanaei has no regrets. “Why should I feel remorse?” he says. “After killing them I removed all trace of them. They had no value to me.” (According to one reformist newspaper, he later admitted that he had had sex with them.) Hanaei also boasted that murdering the women was no harder than “breaking open a melon.”
In another country, such remarks might be dismissed as the musings of a psychopath. But there are justifications for such heedless killing in Iran’s Islamic criminal code, which declares some people unworthy of the blood that runs in their veins. Therefore their lives can be taken with impunity. “If the killer can prove that the victim was a ‘waste of blood’,” says one legal scholar who asked not to be named, “then there will be no charges against the killer.” Such laws, and such lawlessness, are the web that most Iranians long to escape.
posted on August 17, 2001 12:04:02 PM new
Yes! It's definetly a CLARION CALL for ALL AMERICANS to break down the Walls of Seperation of Church and State like the Walls of Jerico and establish GOD's Will-on-Earth and everyone will be forced to live a MORAL life here in America!
But ... but ... that article is not how it would be with a Christian government -- that's Islaam! and NOT Christianity! We're Christians, and that would NEVER happen here in America as a Theocracy! Nope. Noppers. Never Nada. Huh-uh! Wrong!
posted on August 17, 2001 12:12:39 PM new
Really? I didn't think this is something that can become controversial. Is there anyone here who will not think that not only is it a shame that a terrible man murders scores of prostitutes but that there are segments of people who think it is positive?
Theocracy bashing isn't religion bashing.
Well, I'll never underestimate AW. We shall see.
[ edited by jamesoblivion on Aug 17, 2001 12:24 PM ]
posted on August 17, 2001 12:59:38 PM new
It's a good thing that he strangled them.
If he'd shot, stabbed, brained, dismembered, skewered, disemboweled, beheaded, slit their throats, wrists, or any major artery he'd have been guilty of the same crime that they were--wasting blood. Unless he saved their blood--do Iranians enjoy sausage?
posted on August 17, 2001 01:07:24 PM new"Theocracy bashing isn't religion bashing. "
Yes. As a Christian myself, why would I want to bash my own religion? Excuse me, James, for providing a summary at the beginning instead of letting folks come to the same conclusion after many long, drawn-out, re-hashed religious and political debates.
"Well, I'll never underestimate AW. We shall see."
Of course, James -- AW RT'ers are free to read into what anyone writes and twist the facts around to please themselves. It's a matter od depth-perception. It's happened before and it'll just as likely happen again.
posted on August 17, 2001 01:15:35 PM new
Wasn't the Samauri Code the same thing but based on social status rather than religious based morality?
Of course it is horrible as a crime alone without the more complex issues, but this one line, "he later admitted that he had had sex with them" makes it completely beyond a total irony.
T
posted on August 17, 2001 01:20:37 PM new
A "waste of blood" determined by a psychopath and upheld by custom...and when they bring this belief to our shores then what will happen?
posted on August 17, 2001 02:00:29 PM new
"A "waste of blood" determined by a psychopath and upheld by custom...and when they bring this belief to our shores then what will happen?"
I don't think it's necessary to worry about what will happen when they come to our shores. Everyone has a tendency to see an us/them difference. It's comforting. We can attribute the aspects of humanity that we're not comfortable with onto "them," and, at the same time, reassure ourselves that "we're not like that," or, "I could never do that." The painful truth is, we're much more like each other than we are different. Disregarding that truth is comforting and convenient. It's also dangerous - we don't guard against ourselves, our focus is the danger in "them."
"A "waste of blood" determined by a psychopath and upheld by custom"
What will happen when they bring this belief to our shores... Isn't that belief, according to which point of view you come from, already here? Pro-lifers can use that description in regards to abortion. And anti-capital punishment advocates can use it just as well.
posted on August 17, 2001 02:01:14 PM new
It's Iran, for goodness sake.
Nothing surprises me about Iran.
But there are justifications for such heedless killing in Iran’s Islamic criminal code, which declares some people unworthy of the blood that runs in their veins. Therefore their lives can be taken with impunity.
Apparently, anyone...correction...any man in Iran can be the judge of who is worthy and who is not.
posted on August 17, 2001 02:08:49 PM new
[quote]What's barbarous? What those other people do![/quote]
Donny, let's not take moral relativism to the extreme. There is no comparison between anything in our society and this. You will not find state-run newspapers (they don't have a free press) that would condone serial killings. We don't have laws that allow victims to be 'proven' to be wastes. In Iran, in addition to there death penalty laws, the aggrieved family of the victim can choose to pardon the killer. How nice. If the family is merciful the killer walks the streets again.
As for Persians coming here with those awful values - many of them are already here. They're here because they don't like that. In fact, I know a nice guy who laughs when he remembers the little speech that he had to recite in grade school every morning - "blah, blah, blah we hate America blah, blah, blah". He came here when he was nine and he said it took him about two days of living here to throw that all out the window.
The fact is the will of a minority is being imposed upon the majority in Iran, just like in any good old fashioned totalitarian state.
posted on August 17, 2001 02:37:35 PM new
Moral relativism is a very bad thing because it makes really bad things 'not so bad' because it's 'their custom'.
posted on August 17, 2001 02:54:17 PM new
Must be something in the water the other side of the Atlantic..
If it were in Italy it would be the " They offended my honor" defense. Then they throw up their hands and say "Well then what else could he do?"
If it were the Taliban in Afganistan would they even arrest him?
Is there any religion that does not WANT to be a theocracy? At one time the Catholic Church actually had armies and not just the Swiss Guard they have now. The Vatican is stilll a nation by most other countries admission and recognition.
posted on August 17, 2001 03:00:49 PM new"There is no comparison between anything in our society and this."
Do you also think that the Salem Witch Trials were strongly objected to by the townsfolk back then, instead of being cheered onwards by the "righteous" townsfolk? How many times has an abortion doctor been shot and murdered and anti-Abortion groups say that they don't condone such actions -- but they can well understand and sympathyse them? Why is that one guy who's wanted by the FBI for the bombings on abortion clinics here in America so hard to find in the North Carolina wilderness? Weren't there many local citizen who helped this fugitive out, believing in his cause of murder in his religious belifs? Oh, yes. It's those Iranians and their religion that makes such a sickening thought as what they tolerate in the name of religion over there. Yup.
posted on August 17, 2001 03:15:42 PM new
I was thinking more along the lines of "that's a theocracy and this is what theocracies usually become".
I don't consider the Salem Witch Trials and their respective comunities as having anything to with me or my America in any case. My earliest ancestor came to this shore in 1901.
Those people were very similar in outlook to other theocratic societies. Their only redeeming quality in my opinion is that they were refugees from religious persecution (how ironic, huh?).
Just to clarify; the Salem witch people. ^ Not my great-grandparents! They came here because of poverty and weren't oppressors or witch hunters. Clear?
[ edited by jamesoblivion on Aug 17, 2001 04:08 PM ]
posted on August 17, 2001 03:22:22 PM new
Everything is AOK, if it is in the name of G-d, and for the sake of Religion...Right, bushytail? Sure! So, mr. prez, what says ye about down in Georgia, where a church is advocating inflicting such severe corporal punishment to children, that several have been hospitalized? and the county had to remove them from home for their protection, from parents AND preacher, cuz the preacher advocates to beat the devil out of those kids? and the parents take it LITERALLy???? We're talking broken bones, broken teeth, bruises all over little 4 year-old bodies....
I saw a PBS documentary covering this last night...
And that is BARELY the tip of the iceberg...
******** Gosh Shosh! My "About Me" Page
posted on August 17, 2001 03:27:10 PM new
Sorry about that, James. I was only trying to point out that we often dismiss the actions of others in foreign countries simply because people have a natural tendancy to be provincial in their views. I wanted to show that an American Christian theocracy would produce the same horible attitudes as those expressed in Iran. All theocracies are made up of people and I think that the roots of that type of horror of supporting "moral" killings is just a stone's throw away from having a theocracy established here in America. That so many Americans are so ignorant of the facts and the history of theocracies, that so many Americans want our country to turn into a theocracy without realizing what that entails is appalling! That many strongly believe that simply because "we're Americans" and "we're Christians" that such horrific attitudes would never prevail in an American theocracy is perilously naieve.
posted on August 17, 2001 03:35:43 PM new
James, it sounds like the conservative Iranian theologians have decided the ends (purification of society) justify the means (murder).
posted on August 17, 2001 03:35:46 PM new
"I don't consider the Salem Witch Trials and their respective comunities as having anything to with me or my America in any case."
Now that's much better than (and in seeming contradiction with) your last post that I responded to, James.
T
