Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly stated that he wants to see Israel wiped off the map of the world. It seems his fellow Iranians are not safe either. Executions in Iran for non-violent crimes are at an all time high, according to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Iran has the highest executions (per capita) than any other country in the world.

Crimes punishable by death include adultery, apostasy, blasphemy, drug-trafficking (soft and hard drugs), prostitution, homosexuality, sorcery (witchcraft), zina (sexual intercourse between partners not married to each other), individuals converting or preaching Christianity or Judaism, insulting Allah and the prophet Muhammad, corruption on Earth (can virtually mean anything; a legal 'catch-all' term that the defendant is an enemy of Allah for a variety of offences), conspiring against the government, consuming alcohol, gambling and plotting to overthrow the Islamic regime.

Public executions remain a sordid public spectacle. The condemned are ritually humiliated by being paraded in public and insulted before being executed by beheading, hanging, shot by firing squad, strangled (hanged by crane), and tortured to death (stoning) for the crime of adultery.

In 2004, a mentally unstable 16-year-old Iranian girl, Atefeh Rajabi, was hanged by crane in public in Northern Iran. She was sentenced to death for having committed an ‘act incompatible with chastity’ (also known as pre-marital sex). Her 50-year-old male co-defendant was sentenced to 40 lashes and then released.