NCRI

Iran: A young man on death row

NCRI – A young man, Rahim Ahmadi, soon will face gallows in Iran. Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, chief of mullahs' judiciary on Sunday upheld a death sentence by the lower court for him. Ahmadi was 15 at the time of the alleged crime.

Mohammad Mostafai, Ahmadi's attorney maintains that his client is innocent and had no intention of murdering the victim who was his friend.

It is interesting to know that Mostafai's other client, Behnam Zare, was hanged without the judiciary branch notifying either him or his family in August.

Mostafai fears that Ahamdi's fate would not be any better than that of Zare since both cases were tried by the mullahs' judiciary in the southern city of Shiraz.

Earlier this month, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) expressed grave concern over the violation of human rights in Iran. U.N. Human Rights official, Rupert Colville, told reporters "On the 27th of July, for example, 29 executions are reported to have taken place. A month later, on the 28th of August, another five people, including a woman, were reported to have been executed. In all, more than 220 people, including six juvenile offenders, are believed to have been executed this year in Iran already.

"Iran's legal obligation not to impose the death penalty for juveniles was assumed voluntarily when it ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, both of which prohibit the death penalty for crimes committed by people below the age of 18,'' Coleville added.

International outrage over the wave of executions heightened in late August when the regime executed two teenagers, Reza Hejazi and Behnam Zare, for crimes they allegedly committed when they were under 18. On September 10, the state-run daily Etemaad reported that the mullahs’ Supreme Court had upheld the death sentence for a 17-year-old boy named Hossein for a crime he allegedly committed when 14. According to rights groups, 140 minors are awaiting the death penalty in Iran.

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