By Saeed Kamali Dehghan, The Observer, 15 September 2012

In Iran, the country I was born in and where I lived until three years ago, public hanging is a horrific but familiar scene for many, at least for those living close to city centres and public squares. Once as a child, on my way to school, I became an inadvertent spectator of an execution, my eyes shocked at seeing the guards draping a rope around the neck of a convict. The sight has haunted me ever since.

Hanging is the common method for execution in Iran. The judicial killings usually take place in the morning as the sun rises, often at the crime scene or in a city centre. The families of victims and convicts gather as the authorities prepare to hang the condemned from cranes.

Under Iran's sharia law, the victim's family has the right to spare the convict from execution for certain crimes, such as when someone is convicted of killing another person in a car accident. This means many executions see the condemned's relatives incessantly pleading for a pardon. A huge crowd, which might include children, usually surrounds the scene [....]

Human rights organisations estimate that as many as 600 people were put to death in Iran last year, of which at least 488 executions were carried out for alleged drug offences. In the first half of 2011, Iran was executing at the rate of two people a day [....]