Iran has hanged five men accused of raping, stabbing and then burning a woman a week before she was due to get married.
The five men - aged 19 to 24 - were executed in a prison in the city of Qom, southwest of the capital Tehran, yesterday.
A State newspaper said one of them had confessed to the crime. It said the woman was kidnapped after stepping out of a bus on her way home in August last year, then raped and stabbed before being doused with petrol and set on fire to disguise her identity.
Murder, adultery, rape, armed robbery, apostasy and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Iran's sharia law, practiced since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
European governments and Western rights groups have criticised Iran for an increasing number of hangings since the authorities launched a clampdown on "immoral behaviour" in July last year.
Amnesty International in April listed the Islamic state as the world's second most prolific executioner in 2007, after China. It said in a report Iran had executed at least 317 people last year compared with at least 470 in China.