posted July 16, 2001 15:30            

Kazem Montazeri-Moghadam, who presides over the revolutionary court in Karaj, 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Tehran, has been on trial since February along with seven or eight other unidentified officials, the press said.

Iranian law calls for the death penalty in crimes of sexual abuse.

The case centers around the abuse of girls staying at a group home for troubled youth in Karaj.

The official IRNA agency said press had also reported that the unseated judge of the court was arrested in connection with a prostitution ring involving under-age females.

posted July 23, 2001 09:37            

It also said that Mohammad Mahin Khaki, head of the Center of Islamic Orientation home which sheltered runaway and troubled youths, mostly girls between the ages of 12 and 18, was slapped with a one-year jail term as well as an unspecified cash fine.

"The young girls were mistreated, mishandled and encouraged to partake in immoral acts," the Tehran Times said.

The judge's "behaviour and his inexcusable actions in perversity and immoral public conduct must surely have merited the most severe sentence that the law could pass on him," the daily commented in a clear reference to Iranian law which render the death penalty in crimes of sexual abuse.

It said 15 other court officials were indicted in the closed courtroom on charges of molesting teenage girls, but said "it is not known what punishments the accomplices were given."

Press reports last week reported that the unseated judge was arrested in connection with a prostitution ring involving underage girls.