Iran's Alleged New Invention: Finger Amputation Machine (*Graphic Photo Warning*)

Sentenced man is led by hooded men to the amputation machine (Photo from ISNA)

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and in Iran, a handful of fingers for the charge of robbery and adultery. Now the Sharia-guided regime has rolled out a machine with which to mete out the gruesome punishment, according to one of the country's official news outlets.

France 24 discovered the story, having stumbled across photos on Iran’s official press agency site ISNA that were allegedly taken at a public amputation last week. Resembling scenes from the Medieval period, the blindfolded sentenced man is held in place by three men in black hoods, one of whom guides the man’s fingers into the large metal contraption, which presumably includes a rotary saw-like function.

Hooded men place blindfolded man's hand inside the machine (Photo from ISNA)

France 24 reports:

According to the INSA press agency, the man shown getting his finger cut off was charged with robbery and adultery by a court in the southwestern city of Shiraz. He was also accused of being at the head of a criminal organisation...he was [also] sentenced to three years in prison and 99 whip lashes.

No independent witnesses were able to recount the circumstances under which this amputation took place. Four photos of the scene published by the press agency were widely relayed on social media networks. Strangely enough, the man’s face did not betray any signs of suffering in the photos, though it is possible that he might have been drugged.

Though TheBlaze is unable to verify the authenticity of these photos, if authentic, there's little doubt how much pain the punishment would have inflicted. One photograph showed the man's hand being taken out of the machine, revealing that four of his five fingers were chopped off, leaving only his thumb and a bloody mess.

Mahmoud Amiry-Moghaddam, a human rights activist with Iran Human Rights based in Norway told France 24: “What is surprising about this is that not only was this a public amputation, but that photos of it were distributed by official press agencies, and that they showed a machine that we had until yet never seen images of.”

His assessment is that the photos were intentionally posted as a warning to those who intend to launch protests leading up to the Iranian elections in June. “I believe this is a strategy to instil fear in the population so as to avoid any protests,” he said.

France 24 blurred this bloody photo. The original on ISNA showed four of the man's fingers were completely cut off, leaving only his thumb.

Iran which has been under sharia law since 1979 has a notorious reputation for meting out violent corporal punishments. Amnesty International ranked Iran as the top country in terms of the number of executions it carried out, that is 360 in 2011, the most recent year such figures were compiled.

Just last week, Amnesty called on Iranian authorities to cancel the death penalty for five Arab minority members. It also condemned Iran’s execution last week of a 21-year-old who was arrested as a juvenile offender, calling it “a deplorable disregard for international law.”

As TheBlaze reported last year, Iranians were photographed taking children to watch public hangings.