An Iranian judiciary official flogs serial killer Mohammad Bijeh, 22, who has been convicted of kidnapping and murdering 21 people, most of them children, before his execution in the Iranian town of Pakdasht, some 50 kms south of Tehran, 16 March 2005. Bijeh, branded “the vampire of the desert” in Iran, was lashed 100 times and hanged before thousands of spectators. Bijeh and an accomplice, both arrested in September 2004, had over a period of more than a year, reportedly lured children into the desert, stunned them with blows from a stone, sexually abused them and buried the bodies in shallow graves in the desert south of Tehran. AFP PHOTO/BEHROUZ MEHRI
