Iran: child offender executed in northern Iran
Published by Ali on July 30, 2019
A child offender was hanged on 28 July, 2019 in a prison in the northern province of Mazandaran for the alleged murder of a man during a fight at the age of 16.
According to a human rights group, the 22 year old man identified as Touraj Qasemi had been detained for the past six years in Nour Prison.
The report said that at the age of 16, Touraj killed a 19 year old man during a fight.
Efforts to get the parents of the victim to retract their request for the death sentence were futile, and the minor offender was hanged this morning in prison.
State-run news agencies also covered the execution though they changed the date of the incident and Touraj’s age in an attempt to hide the execution of a minor offender.
“The prisoner, who had murdered a 19 year old in the Angtaroud Village around five years ago, was executed today at the age of 23,” the Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor of Nour claimed today in comments carried by the YJC state run website.
Iran has implemented the death penalty for a wide variety of charges since the 1979 Revolution, including drug trafficking and religious offences. It is among a handful of countries that executes juvenile offenders.
Iran is a signatory of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbids use of the death penalty.
However, a 2015 report from Amnesty International found that the changes had not been meaningfully implemented, allowing the authorities to “whitewash their continuing violations of children’s rights and deflect criticism of their appalling record as one of the world’s last executioners of juvenile offenders.”
According to Amnesty International more than 90 people in Iran are currently on death row for crimes that took place when they were under 18.
