The Iranian regime must comply with its international human rights obligations and immediately halt its planned execution of a juvenile offender, two United Nations human rights experts urged Wednesday.
“Regardless of the circumstances and nature of the crime, the execution of juvenile offenders is clearly prohibited by international human rights law,” Ahmed Shaheed, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, and Christof Heyns, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, declared in a press release issued Wednesday.
“The imposition of the death penalty in Iran contrasts the current international trend of abolishing the death penalty in law and in practice,” they added.
Saman Naseem along with five other Iranian political prisoners being held in the central prison in the northwestern city of Orumiyeh were transferred to solitary cells on Wednesday for possible execution.
The other five political prisoners are: Yones Aghat, Habiballah Afshari, Ali Afshari, Sirvan Nezhavi, and Ibrahim Shapoori.
According to an Urgent Action issued on Monday by Amnesty International, Naseem was beaten on Sunday to force him to make TV ‘confessions.’
“Saman Naseem was allowed no access to his lawyer during early investigations and he said he was tortured, which included the removal of his finger and toe nails and being hung upside down for several hours,” Amnesty statement said.
“Saman Naseem called his family on 15 February and told them that earlier that day men in plain clothes had taken him to the security department of the Oroumieh Prison. He said the men, who he believed belonged to the Ministry of Intelligence and were carrying cameras and recording equipment, beat him for several hours to force him into making video-taped ‘confessions’, but he refused to do so,” AI statement added.
According to the Amnesty International Naseem is due to be executed on February 19 after being arrested on July 17, 2011.
Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a press release on February 13: “That the Iranian authorities are preparing to put to death a young man who’s been tortured for 97 days to ‘confess’ when he was 17 years old beggars belief.”
In a letter seen by Amnesty International, Saman Naseem, now 22 years old, described how he was kept in a 2 x 0.5 meter cell and constantly tortured before being forced while blindfolded to put his fingerprints on ‘confession’ papers. He was forced to admit to acts that lead to his conviction for membership of an armed opposition group and taking up arms against the state. He was 17 years old at the time.
“This is the reality of the criminal justice system in Iran, which makes a mockery of its own statements that it does not execute children and upholds its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui said.
