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Iranian pair raped and killed 22 children
September 13, 2004
London - Iranian police have arrested two men suspected of raping and savagely
killing up to 22 children, and then disguising the smell of their rotting
bodies by leaving a dead cat or dog near their makeshift graves, AFP reported.
Newspapers on Saturday described the two 25-year-old suspected killers as
"hyenas" or "vampires of the Tehran desert" where they preyed on youngsters,
especially the children of illegal immigrants who would hesitate to report
their disappearance to the police.
The respected government newspaper Iran said the two men had killed 22
children, two men and a prostitute within the past year.
Another paper, Hamvatan Salam, said the pair, Mohammad and his accomplice Ali,
had slain eight children aged between nine and 11, while the state television
daily Jam-e Jam put the figure at 15 victims, nine of whom were children.
"To see blood makes me feel euphoric," Mohammad said, according to one paper,
adding that his mother had beat him as a child and he was jealous of other
children and wanted them to suffer.
The men, both employed in a brickworks, would lure away the children in the
desert south of the capital Tehran by saying they were going to dig out rabbits
or foxes from their burrows.
They then stunned their victims with blows from a stone, abused them and
shattered their skulls.
The bodies were buried in a hole or makeshift grave and the men would kill an
animal to leave on the corpse's resting place to hide the smell of
putrefaction.
Sometimes, the two would burn the bodies and then bury them, the newspapers
said.
Police stumbled on the killings after finding two children, almost dead, about
a month ago, said the newspaper Etemad. One child is still in a coma, but the
other recovered enough to speak and put them on the trail of Ali.
Ali swore that he acted alone but finally pointed the finger also at Mohammad,
saying he was scared of his accomplice who was planning to kill him.
Mohammad was arrested as he was spying with binoculars on children swimming.
On September 8, the two men led police to the scene of their last killings
where a bulldozer uncovered the burnt corpses of Milad Aminpour, Kayvan
Khrosravi and Ahmad Azimi, all of whom had been kidnapped as they played
football.
In the next 48 hours, the body of Sajjad Sotoudeh who was killed a year ago,
and six unidentified corpses were exhumed in a battery chicken farm.
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