Iran: Four Youths Face Execution

international | rights and freedoms | other press Thursday July 10, 2008 13:12 by pat c

Amnesty raises the case of four youths who face imminent execution in Iran. Full text at the link.

Iran executed 16-year-old Mohammad Hassanzadeh, an Iranian Kurd on 10 June 2008 for a crime committed when he was 14. Four other juvenile offenders are at risk of execution between 11 and 25 July. 24 international and regional human rights organizations called on the head of Iran’s judiciary to suspend these four executions immediately.

Almost 140 juvenile offenders are known to be on death row in Iran, but the true figure could be even higher – for example, Mohammad Hassanzadeh’s case was not known to campaigners prior to his execution.

Iranian officials have attempted to justify killing juveniles by terming these killings “retribution” and not “execution.” Judiciary speaker Alireza Jamshidi: “In [Iranian] law we don’t have execution (‘edam) for persons under 18 years of age; what we have in the laws for persons between 15 to 18 is the issue of retribution (qesas).”

The distinction between “execution” and “retribution” is meaningless . By making such misleading statements, the Iranian authorities are attempting to obscure the fact that Iran is violating international law every time it executes a juvenile offender – whether or not the individual has reached 18 at the time of their execution.