A secondary school pupil has been executed in Iran after being convicted of raping another boy.
During a two-month trial in early 2015, in which he had no legal representation, Hassan Afshar, 19, was found guilty of “lavat-e be onf” – forced male to male anal intercourse.
“Homosexual conduct” remains illegal under Iran’s Sharia law and is punishable by fines, public flogging or execution.
Magdalena Mughrabi, an interim deputy director at Amnesty International, said Iran had proved that “its sickening enthusiasm” for putting juveniles to death, in contravention of international law, knew no bounds.
“Hassan was a 17-year-old high school student when he was arrested. He had no access to a lawyer and the judiciary rushed through the investigation and prosecution, convicting and sentencing him to death within two months of his arrest as though they could not execute him quickly enough,” she said.
“In a cruel stroke of irony, officials did not inform Hassan Afshar of his death sentence for around seven months while he was held in a juvenile detention facility because they did not want to cause him distress – and yet astonishingly were still prepared to execute him.
“With this execution, Iranian authorities have demonstrated once again their callous disregard for human rights.”
The implementation of his death sentence, which had been scheduled to take place last week, was postponed following public pressure.
Amnesty International claims Iran executed at least 75 juvenile offenders between 2005 and 2015 – including 13 last year.
Source:
qnews.com.au, Rod Gardiner, August 9, 2017
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