Iran chop off criminals' fingers

The Sharia saw

The terrifying device Iran uses to chop off criminals' fingers

Looking like something devised for a grisly horror movie, this crude saw is being used to amputate the fingers of criminals in Iran.

In a series of photographs released by the country’s state news agency, a blindfolded man is led to the machine where two hooded men put his hand in a vice.

Another turns a handle which operates a circular saw that guillotines four of the man’s fingers.

His bloody hand is then held up before being dipped in raw iodine. Incredibly, the man’s face reveals no pain, suggesting he may have been drugged.

The man was found guilty of theft and adultery by a court in the south-western city of Shiraz last week and his punishment was meted out under sharia laws.

Following the amputation, a public prosecutor said that such punishments for criminals would become more severe in an announcement seen as a warning before June’s elections to replace President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has served his maximum two terms.

Mahmoud Amiry-Moghaddam, a spokesman for Iran Human Rights, said: ‘I believe this is a strategy to instil fear in the population so as to avoid any protests.’

Last week, at least 15 journalists were arrested in what Sherif Mansour, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, described as part of a ‘never-ending effort to brand critics as enemies of the state’.

Under Sharia law, amputation, whipping, and even death by stoning are all legal forms of punishment.

When Iran last went to the polls in 2009, hundreds of thousands took to the streets in protest over the disputed victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in what was dubbed the Green revolution.

Clashes between hardliners and reformers are expected at this year's election.

Earlier this month two men were publicly hanged in the capital Tehran after being found guilty of carrying out a violent street robbery.

Alireza Mafiha and Mohammad Ali Sarvari were paraded before a baying crowd of 300 in a public park before nooses were placed around their necks and they were hoisted into the air up by cranes.

The pair had been arrested after posting a video on YouTube in December showing them attacking a man with a machete on a Tehran street.

It showed four masked men on motorbikes approaching their victim before assaulting him with a machete and taking his bag and jacket.