RETIRED LAWYER DAVID HARRIS: “What we know is what goes on in Iran, which is, people who have been condemned for all sorts of spurious offences, including their sexuality or other sexual offences, which Islamists in the mullahs’ regime believe to be wrong, they are executed in public. We’ve all seen the pictures of people suspended from cranes, and of course the whole point of it is not to promote justice but to promote terror; and that is what is so evil about the method of execution in Tehran, it is done in public, not simply to punish someone for wrongdoing but to terrorise the others. It’s a particularly barbaric practice which I absolutely abhor, even more than I abhor the use of the death penalty in other circumstances. So, well, that’s a thought, it’s an appropriate day to make that comment because it’s the international Day Against the Death Penalty, and I think I’m right in saying that some 82 percent of the world’s states now either have completely abolished the death penalty or have at least put a moratorium on it. This shows you how out of step Tehran is with world opinion and, somehow, that must be brought home to the world.”
MALCOLM FOWLER: “When you see cross party parliamentarians upsetting their governments, sticking their necks out, putting themselves out, when you see them, let us not forget that there is no career track there for them; they are doing it, whatever their political persuasions, they are doing it because they believe it is right. And that should, frankly, hearten us.”
