The public hanging last week of a 16-year-old girl in the northern Iranian city of Neka has provoked an outcry from human rights watchdogs and calls to reform the country’s capital punishment laws for child offenders.

The girl, Ateqeh Rajabi, was charged with “acts incompatible with chastity” for allegedly having sex out of wedlock, and reportedly hurled insults at the judge and began to disrobe during her trial.

According to the German newspaper Der Spiegel, the judge was so infuriated by her courtroom behavior that he personally wrapped the noose around her neck and gave the executioner the green light to hoist her off the ground in a public square on August 15.

The grim style of hanging – being slowly hoisted by a crane from a flatbed truck rather than dropping swiftly through the gallows – has become a trademark of Iranian capital punishment.

Various newspaper reports claim Rajabi’s national identification card stated she was 16, although municipal authorities reportedly announced at her execution that she was 22.

Human rights organizations are questioning the mental competency of the girl and whether she was afforded legal representation at trial. An Iranian news Web site, Peykeiran, reported that the girl’s father begged for money outside the courthouse to hire an attorney.

Her male companion, whose age was not provided in newspaper accounts, reportedly received 100 lashes as punishment and was released.

“The killing of Ateqeh Rajabi reads like a catalogue of the most appalling human rights violations,” read a statement released yesterday by Amnesty International. “The public hanging of a child, believed to be mentally incompetent, after a trial in which she reportedly had no lawyer…totally beggars belief.”

A bill to raise the minimum age for execution in Iran to 18 was under consideration by the Iranian Parliament in December 2003, the organization said, but was never ratified by the country’s highest legislative body, the Guardian Council.

The hanging of Rajabi was the tenth government-mandated execution of a minor in Iran recorded by Amnesty International since 1990, and the second this year.

In January, Iran executed a 21-yearold man who allegedly committed a murder when he was 17.

According to Amnesty International, at least 113 people, including six women, were executed by the Iranian government in 2002, the last year for which statistics were available.

While hanging is perhaps the best known form of capital punishment in Iran, flogging is the most widely used. Amnesty International reported that 84 people were flogged to death in 2002. Two people were stoned, including one on national television, according to the organization.