Killing Machine : Iran executes 100 juveniles each year as brutal ‘eye for an eye’ justice system sees scores of kids on death row

The barbaric laws, known as Qisas (retribution in kind, Lex Talionis), leave prisoners - including children as young as nine* - facing torture, unfair trials and public executions as punishment.

Human rights groups have again hit out at the country's vile depravity which takes place behind closed doors and defies international laws after a report revealed shocking truths hidden behind the criminal justice system.

The annual report of Human Rights Activists of Iran revealed 85 youngsters are currently on death row - despite capital punishment being prohibited worldwide for under 18s.

They estimate up to 100 children are secretly put to death each year and believe authorities haven't publicised more than 82 per cent of executions.

Under the Middle Eastern country's Islamic law, boys over 15 and girls over the age of nine can be tried as an adult for capital crimes such as murder.

They can therefore be sentenced to death - in utter disregard for the public outrage or international condemnation they may face.

Under its Islamic Penal Code, a death sentence can be handed down for crimes such as kidnapping, adultery, drinking alcohol, political offences and murder.

Iran covertly flogged and executed two teenage cousins in April 2019 after an "unfair trial" - and didn't even notify them they had been sentenced to death.

Mehdi Sohrabifar and Amin Sedaghat, both 17, were convicted of rape and spent two years in a juvenile centre in Shiraz before their deaths, according to Amnesty International.

The pair bore lash marks on their bodies - suggesting they had been brutally flogged - before they were both secretly hung.

Their families and lawyers were also not informed about their executions in advance, the human rights group said.

Philip Luther, Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa Director, said of the killings: "It seems they cruelly kept these two boys in the dark about their death sentences for two years, flogged them in the final moments of their lives and then carried out their executions in secret."

He dubbed the death penalty punishment a "flagrant assault on children's rights" and hit out at Iranian authorities "disregard of international law".

The country is the top executioner of children in the world, Amnesty added.

Luther continued: "We have identified a trend in which Iran’s authorities are carrying out executions of juvenile offenders in secret and without giving advance notice to the families, seemingly in a deliberate attempt to avoid global outrage."

The untold stories of thousands of executions reveal a chilling trend in Iran's sickening secret execution spree.

From the beginning of this year to October 9, the human rights group said 299 citizens are known to have been killed.

In most cases, prisoners who are handed the death penalty are hanged, while crowds are encouraged to watch and some executions are televised - with several people sometimes killed at one time.

One woman on her way to the gallows, Zahra Ismaili, suffered a heart attack after seeing 16 men hang in front of her - but her lifeless body was strung up anyway.

Although many cases have been condemned on a global scale, Iran carelessly pushes ahead with its brutal death penalty regime.

Kazem Gharibabadi, secretary of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights and former UN representative at the UN, recently defended the punishments and insisted executing minors was not illegal or did not violate any of Iran's international commitments.

But one 15-year-old spent nearly a decade on death row before he was secretly executed in August this year.

Sajad Sanjari was convicted of fatally stabbing a man he said had tried to rape him and was hung nearly ten years later for the alleged crime, despite being arrested when he was a minor.

His devastated family were only informed of his execution afterward when told to collect his body.

COERCED CONFESSIONS AND TORTURE

And in November this year, Arman Abdolali was executed after spending eight years behind bars for murder where he was subjected to a "grossly unfair trial marred by torture-tainted 'confessions".

He was arrested when he was aged just 17 after his girlfriend disappeared and was held in solitary confinement for 76 days and repeatedly beaten before his alleged confession.

Despite appeals from UN human rights experts and Amnesty alike, authorities plowed ahead with the killing - despite the alleged victim's body never being found.

Iran's abhorrent judicial system is chillingly designed to inflict as much pain as possible in retaliation for crimes.

This includes prisoners having their eyes gouged out, hands chopped off and other amputations.

Torture is also believed to rife in Iran's prisons, with electric shocks, floggings, water boarding and sexual violence used on prisoners, according to human rights groups.

Shocking executions and barbaric punishments continue to be carried out under hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi who - despite activists claiming he has a bloody history steeped in murder - won a landslide victory to become president earlier this year.

In the past, Raisi - known by some as The Butcher - has allegedly ordered the torture of pregnant women, had prisoners thrown off cliffs, and had people flogged with electric cords.

He earned his sick nickname over his alleged involvement in the mass execution of political prisoners in the 1980s.

* Iran criminal age is 9 for girls, 15 for boys.

Source: The Sun, Olivia Burke, December 27, 2021

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