AFP | Paris
Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com
Iran has executed a 17-year-old boy convicted of murder, two rights groups announced yesterday, expressing outrage that the Islamic Republic continues to hang people for crimes committed when they were minors. did.
Norway-based Hengau and the Iranian Human Rights Group (IHR) announced in separate statements that Hamidreza Azari was executed on Friday at a prison in Sabzevar, a town in eastern Razavi Khorasan province.
The Persian-language satellite television station Iran International also reported on the execution, saying that Azari was the only child in his family and, despite his age, had already started working as a scrap worker several years ago.
Both Hengaard and the IHR said he was 16 years old at the time of the crime and 17 at the time of his execution, citing documents they had seen. He was reportedly sentenced to death for killing a man in a brawl in May.
Rights groups said the execution was another violation by Iran of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which defines a child as anyone under the age of 18.
“Iran is one of the few countries that sentences child prisoners to death and executes more juveniles than any other country,” the IHR said, adding that its data shows at least 68 juveniles have been executed in Iran since 2010. It added that minors had been executed.
IHR Director-General Mahmoud Amiri Moghaddam added: “In Iran, if you want to get a driver’s license you have to be 18 years old, but 15 is enough to be executed.” The IHR said Iran’s latest penal code specifies the age of criminal responsibility for juveniles as 15.