Mohammed Bijeh was a young laborer in the brick kilns of Pakdasht, a poor town on the desert edge south-east of Tehran. For more than a year, boys from the area went missing. In September 2004 police arrested Bijeh and a fellow kiln worker, Ali Baghi. Bijeh confessed in court to murdering 16 boys aged 8 to 15, and a court in Tehran passed 16 death sentences on him. The charge sheet read out at his execution listed 21 killings, and the victims' families said the real number was 26.
The case caused national outrage in Iran, and not only because of the killings. Families had been reporting their children missing for many months, and the police and judicial officials who were supposed to look for them were later found to have failed. Nineteen police officers were held responsible for negligence, according to Radio Farda, and the Associated Press reported that 16 officers were reprimanded.
On the morning of March 16, 2005, Bijeh was given 100 lashes and then hanged from a crane at Pakdasht, in front of a crowd of thousands that included the families of the boys. The teenage brother of one of the victims broke through the cordon and stabbed him in the back before the rope was placed around his neck.
Pakdasht lies about 19 miles south-east of Tehran, in Tehran province; the Associated Press called it a small, impoverished town. Both accused men worked in the brickworks, according to AFP and Radio Farda.
Little is known of Bijeh's life before his arrest. Wire reports at the time of his execution gave his age as 22 (AFP) and 23 (AP). A 2018 review of the case by Siavash Hooshyar for Ekhtebar, an Iranian legal news site, gives more. It records his full surname as Basijeh, with Bijeh as the name he was known by, and says he was born in the Iranian year 1361 in Torbat-e Heydarieh. He grew up in a large family, with six full and six half siblings. Ekhtebar reports that his mother died of cancer when he was small, that he described constant conflict with his father, including beatings, and that his father took him out of school. When he was about 11, the family moved to the Tehran area, and he went to work as an unskilled laborer in the brick kilns.
Bijeh himself gave reporters a different picture of his mother. In October 2004 Radio Farda reported that he had told the media that his mother had mistreated him as a child and that this was why he wanted to see other children suffer. Ekhtebar also reports that a forensic examination found no chromosomal abnormality and measured a high IQ, and that a psychiatric evaluation by Dr. Mohammadreza Nikkhoo described an antisocial personality marked by emotional coldness, a lack of empathy and impulsiveness.
The court's own reckoning, as Ekhtebar reports it, put the killings over a period of 19 months. AFP and Radio Farda both reported that the two men had been taking children for more than a year before their arrest. The AP account, which follows what Bijeh confessed to in court, places the killings he admitted between March and September 2004.
According to AFP and Radio Farda, the boys were lured into the desert outside Pakdasht with the promise of a hunt for rabbits or foxes. They were killed there, and their bodies were buried in the desert near the town.
Ekhtebar notes that commentators at the time suggested some families were slow to report their children missing because they feared deportation. Ekhtebar reports that relatives said the police did not seriously follow up the reports they did make.
The reporting names only a few of the dead, and says little about them beyond their ages and their families' grief.
Kayvan Khosravi was 10. The Independent Online report of the execution says he was kidnapped and killed the year before. His father stood in the crowd at the execution, holding the hand of his young daughter, and told AFP it was the best day of his life.
Ahmad Azimi was 9. At the execution his father told AFP that Ali Baghi had confessed and should hang as well.
Rahim Younessi's brother, who was 17 according to AFP and 16 according to Radio Farda, was the young man who broke through the cordon at the execution and stabbed Bijeh.
Milad Kahani's mother was invited by officials to place the rope around Bijeh's neck, according to AFP.
Ekhtebar lists further names from the indictment, among them Seyed Javad Hassani, Mohammadreza Barbari, Masoud Sheidak, Sajjad Sotoudeh and Vahid Amini, together with Keyvan Khosravi and a boy it names as Milad Tahmani. Those spellings come from a Persian text and may differ from other transliterations. Ekhtebar reports that the presiding judge counted 17 children aged 7 to 14 among the dead, along with two men and one woman. It also reports that six boys taken by the pair survived.
Ekhtebar describes a long investigation that went wrong for a year or more. It reports that children had been reported missing, and a body found, about a year before the case broke, and that police detained about 80 people over time and released them for lack of evidence. One of those detained, according to Ekhtebar, was Bijeh himself, who was held for some weeks or months (it gives both about three months and 72 days) and then released.
The case broke in the first days of September 2004. Ekhtebar reports that three schoolboys were reported missing on 10 Shahrivar 1383 in the Iranian calendar, and that Ali Baghi was arrested after a child gave police information about three missing friends. Baghi was arrested first, and Bijeh was arrested on 15 Shahrivar 1383. Ekhtebar reports that Bijeh confessed only after long questioning. AFP and Radio Farda give the month of both arrests as September 2004.
Once the two men were in custody, the failure to find them sooner became a national issue. Radio Farda reported in October 2004 that President Mohammad Khatami had asked the interior minister to follow the case personally. According to the AP, the Interior Ministry criticized police for failing to catch the suspects after the first crime.
A statement posted on the police website and reported by Radio Farda in October 2004 said 19 police officers had been found responsible for negligence of duty during the period of the killings, and that the files of seven detained officers had been sent to the judiciary. The statement did not say what punishment they would face. The AP later reported that 16 officers were reprimanded for dereliction of duty. Ekhtebar adds that a report prepared for the government by Ali-Asghar Ahmadi found that a proper investigation could have stopped the killings earlier, and that it blamed the criminal investigation police in Tehran. Ekhtebar also reports that the judiciary found the Pakdasht prosecutor, his deputy and two investigating judges negligent, and that the head of the Pakdasht justice department resigned.
The two men were tried in Tehran by Branch 74 of the provincial criminal court. Radio Farda's report of the execution names Branch 74 of the Tehran provincial judiciary as the court that issued the ruling. Ekhtebar names the presiding judge as Mansour Yavarzadeh, sitting with four advisory judges. Bijeh's court-appointed lawyer was Dabir Daryabeigi, according to Radio Farda and Ekhtebar.
Radio Farda reported in October 2004 that the trial was due to open behind closed doors. AFP reported that the trial lasted about two days. Victims' relatives disrupted it, rushing toward the defendants after Bijeh described what he had done to one of the boys, and the court then continued in private. A witness told AFP that Bijeh was completely calm and showed no remorse. Daryabeigi told the media that his client showed no remorse or sense of guilt, according to Radio Farda.
Bijeh confessed in court. The AP reported that he admitted murdering 16 boys aged 8 to 15 between March and September 2004. Prosecutors and the families asked for the death penalty for both men.
AFP reported on October 15, 2004, that the judge had delivered the verdict after the trial moved into private session. Citing the newspaper Kayhan, AFP said Bijeh had received 16 death sentences and had been ordered to be hanged in public after 100 lashes. AFP's report counted 19 kidnap victims who were killed, 17 of them children.
Ekhtebar, which gives the verdict date as 27 Aban 1383 in the Iranian calendar, sets out the judgment count by count. In its account the court acquitted Bijeh of theft and convicted him of the murder of 20 people, children, women and men. For 16 of those killings it passed sentences of retaliation (qesas), and for the other four it ordered blood money (diyeh). On other counts the court ordered public execution and 100 lashes. For kidnapping he received 15 years in prison, and for seven counts of attempted murder, three years. AFP's October report said that the courts ordered Bijeh to pay blood money to four of the families and asked the government to pay the rest. At the time blood money for a male victim was set at 220 million rials, about $25,000, and half that for a female victim.
The government had already said it would pay. Radio Farda reported in October 2004 that the governor of Tehran province, Ali-Akbar Rahmani, had said the state would pay blood money to the victims' families.
Ali Baghi, the second defendant, is also named in AP reporting as Ali Gholampour; Ekhtebar gives both names and says he was 31 at the time of the trial. He too worked in the kilns.
Reports differ on how his case moved through the courts. AFP reported in October 2004 that the trial court spared him the death penalty and gave him 15 years in prison and 100 lashes for his part in the kidnappings. AFP's report of the execution in March 2005 said instead that both men had first been sentenced to hang, and that in January 2005 the Supreme Court ruled Baghi should serve 15 years in prison instead. The AP and Ekhtebar agree on the outcome: he was acquitted of taking part in the murders and convicted of taking part in some of the kidnappings, which he had admitted, and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison and 100 lashes.
The families did not accept the result. At the execution the crowd called for Baghi to be hanged as well, and relatives told AFP that he would be killed if he ever left prison. What became of him after 2005 was not reported.
The Supreme Court of Iran upheld Bijeh's convictions and sentences. The AP reported that the verdict was upheld before the execution, and a Pakdasht judicial official told Radio Farda the same on the day he was hanged.
The execution was carried out at about 10 a.m. on March 16, 2005, at Pakdasht, near the scene of the killings. Radio Farda's live report, an interview with the Tehran journalist Alborz Maleki, who watched from the scene, placed it in front of the Pakdasht courthouse. The public relations office of the Tehran provincial judiciary announced it. A judicial official at Pakdasht told Radio Farda that the authorities had chosen a public hanging as a warning to others.
Estimates of the crowd varied. The AP gave about 5,000 people, women and children among them, and Maleki estimated about 20,000. Riot police and about 100 members of the security forces held the crowd back behind barbed wire.
Several plainclothes officials took turns to lash him. Some in the crowd threw stones and called for harder strokes. He fell to his knees during the flogging but stayed silent; AFP described him as calm and quiet throughout. Radio Farda reported that other relatives wanted to strike some of the lashes themselves and that officers stopped them.
After the flogging, the brother of Rahim Younessi got past the security officers and stabbed Bijeh before police pulled him away. The mother of Milad Kahani was then invited to place the rope around his neck. The rope was attached to the hook of a crane, which lifted him into the air. The AP reported that his body was lowered after about 20 minutes and that a doctor confirmed he was dead.
Before he died, according to the judicial official who spoke to Radio Farda, Bijeh said he had put his trust in God and repented, and that the lashes and the execution would wash away his sins.
The crowd's reaction was mixed. Some applauded and some wept, calling out the names of their children; others shouted at Bijeh. Families tried again and again to reach the body and were held back by riot police, and the AP reported scuffles for at least half an hour. When the body was taken away by ambulance, people threw stones at police and soldiers. Maleki told Radio Farda that while many in the crowd celebrated, others said that no human death should be cheered.
Ekhtebar reports that no relative claimed the body and that it was buried in secret.
The hanging drew attention to Iran's use of public execution. The AP noted that convicts were hanged in public only when a court found that the crime had deeply affected public feeling, and that reformists argued public executions damaged the country's image abroad and reflected badly on Islam. Opinion at Pakdasht was divided. One local woman told the AP that public executions reduce crime and that Bijeh deserved more than death. Another man who watched said that public hangings promote violence, that crime had not fallen despite many executions, and that revenge was not the solution.
How many people died. No two sources agree. Bijeh confessed in court to 16 boys (AP). AFP's October 2004 report counted 19 kidnap victims killed, 17 of them children; Radio Farda in October 2004 reported 20 children; Ekhtebar reports a verdict for 20 killings and a judge's count of 17 children and three adults; the charge sheet read at the execution listed 21 killings (AFP), and Radio Farda's report of the execution spoke of 21 children. Relatives told AFP that 26 children had been killed. The figure of 26 was never tested in court.
The "corruption on earth" charge. A Pakdasht judicial official told Radio Farda on the day of the execution that the court had convicted Bijeh of corruption on earth (mofsed-e fel-arz) and that the Supreme Court had upheld the verdict, and AFP reported that he was declared "corrupt on earth" in the charge sheet read at the execution. Ekhtebar reports instead that a separate Revolutionary Court judge sentenced both men to death for corruption on earth and that the Supreme Court overturned that ruling, leaving the criminal court's sentences in place. The reports leave the point unsettled.
Baghi's first sentence. AFP reported in October 2004 that the trial court gave Baghi 15 years; AFP's March 2005 report said he was first sentenced to death and that the Supreme Court reduced the sentence in January 2005.
Bijeh's age. AFP gave 22 and the AP 23 at the time of his death.
Bijeh's mother. Ekhtebar reports that his mother died of cancer when he was small; Radio Farda reported in October 2004 that Bijeh told the media his mother had mistreated him as a child. Neither account was tested in court.
Iranian year 1361: Bijeh born in Torbat-e Heydarieh, according to Ekhtebar.
About age 11: moves with his family to the Tehran area and goes to work in the brick kilns (Ekhtebar).
Before September 2004: boys go missing around Pakdasht; police detain and release about 80 people, Bijeh among them (Ekhtebar).
March to September 2004: the killings Bijeh later confessed to in court (AP).
September 2004: Ali Baghi and Mohammed Bijeh arrested.
October 2004: police find 19 officers negligent and refer seven to the judiciary (Radio Farda); President Khatami asks the interior minister to follow the case.
October 2004: trial before Branch 74 of the Tehran provincial criminal court; verdict reported by AFP on October 15, 2004, with 16 death sentences for Bijeh.
January 2005: Supreme Court rules Baghi should serve 15 years (AFP).
Before March 16, 2005: Supreme Court upholds Bijeh's sentences.
March 16, 2005, about 10 a.m.: Bijeh flogged and hanged from a crane in public at Pakdasht.