Iran executed a man who was charged with murder when he was 17 years old, state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported, ignoring a UN-backed campaign by rights groups calling on authorities to abide by international law and commute his death sentence.
Arman Abdolali was a juvenile when he was arrested and subsequently sentenced to death for killing his girlfriend, Ghazaleh Shakoor, in 2014.
According to IRNA, a retrial and numerous other efforts to secure support for a pardon from Shakoor’s family failed and Abdolali was hanged early Wednesday.
On Oct. 12, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights urgently appealed to Iran to halt his execution, citing reports he’d been tortured and ill-treated while in solitary confinement when still a teenager.
Executing children is unequivocally banned under international law and Iran is one of just a handful of countries that applies the death penalty to minors, according to the London-based human rights group Amnesty International.
The Islamic Republic is the world’s second-most prolific executioner after China and since 2020 has hanged four people who were under 18 at the time of their offense, according to Amnesty.
Source: bloomberg.com, Staff, November 24, 2021
Juvenile Offender Arman Abdolali Executed in Rajai Shahr Prison
Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); November 24, 2021: Juvenile offender Arman Abdolali who was sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder, was executed in Rajai Shahr Prison in the early hours of this morning.
Iran Human Rights strongly condemns Arman Abdolali's execution and calls for condemnation by the international community. Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, IHRNGO's Director said: "Execution of Arman Abdolali is an international crime. Besides being executed for an alleged offense committed at under 18 years of age which is a violation of international law, Arman was sentenced to death based on confessions extracted under torture, without a fair trial and due process, and his repeated transfers for execution and then returning him without any explanation by the authorities is psychological torture. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Head of the judiciary Ebramin Raeisi must be held accountable for these crimes".
According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, juvenile offender Arman Abdolali was executed in Rajai Shahr Prison in the early hours of this morning, November 24.
Informed sources told Iran Human Rights: “Arman was returned to the ward after being transferred for execution for the sixth time. He was transferred to solitary confinement against at 8pm last night. They didn’t even allow his family to visit him for the last time.”
Arman Abdolali was born on 9 March 1996 and was 17 years old at the time of the alleged murder in 2013. He was sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder without a body ever being found.
Upon arrest, Arman was held in solitary confinement for 74 days where he confessed to the murder. He was subsequently tried and sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) based on the confession, without taking into consideration that he was a juvenile offender.
United Nations Human Right Experts including the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran urgently appealed to Iran to halt his execution on October 12 and demanded that Iran stop sentencing children to death.
Iran is one of the few countries in the world that still carries out the death penalty for juvenile offenders. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the Islamic Republic is a signatory to, prohibit the issuance and implementation of the death penalty for crimes committed by an individual below 18 years of age.
Arman Abdolali is the second juvenile offender to have been executed in 2021.
Yet, according to data collected by IHR and international human rights organisations, the Islamic Republic is responsible for more than 70% of all executions of juvenile offenders in the last 30 years. IHR’s statistics also show that at least 64 juvenile offenders have been executed in Iran over the past 10 years, with at least four executed in 2020.
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
