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Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

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Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

Iran commutes death sentences of six juvenile offenders

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Iran: Medieval and barbaric punishments
Iran: Medieval and barbaric punishments
UN says Iran executing people who had committed crimes as children at ‘an unprecedented rate’

Tehran: Iran has commuted death sentences against six juvenile offenders following UN criticism it was executing people who had committed crimes as children at “an unprecedented rate”, a report said on Thursday.

Prosecutors asked the judiciary to reconsider 10 cases, the Shahrvand newspaper quoted Tehran chief prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi as saying.

“Six requests were accepted and their death sentences overturned,” he said.

International conventions outlaw the death penalty for offences committed by minors but Iranian law allows executions of those convicted of such offences once they reach 18.

However, it also allows for death sentences to be commuted to compensation to victims’ families if it is determined that the juvenile offenders did not understand the full gravity of their actions.

Shahrvand did not specify what the judiciary decided in the other four cases referred to it.

Last week, UN human rights experts appealed to Iran to cancel the looming execution of Hamid Ahmadi who was 17 when he was sentenced to death in 2009 for the fatal stabbing of a young man during a fight.

They said that last month they intervened to halt the execution of another juvenile offender, and that they had learnt too late that two others were hanged on January 15 and 18.

Source: Agence France-Presse, February 9, 2017

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