The Iranian authorities have flogged and secretly flogged boys below the age of 18, Amnesty International has discovered, showing utter disdain for global law and children’s rights.
Mehdi Sohrabifar and Amin Sedaghat, two cousins, were hanged on 25 April in
Adilabad prison in Shiraz, Fars province, southern Iran. Both were arrested aged 15 and convicted on more than one rape charge following an unfair trial.
According to data obtained by way of Amnesty International, the teens had been unaware that they had been sentenced to loss of life until shortly before their executions and bore lash marks on their bodies, indicating that they had been flogged earlier than their deaths. Moreover, their households and attorneys were no longer knowledgeable about the executions in advance and were stunned to learn of the information.
“The Iranian government has once more proved that they’re sickeningly organized to place kids at risk of death, in flagrant disregard of international law. It seems they cruelly saved these two boys inside the darkish approximately their demise sentences for 2 years, flogged them in the final moments of their lives, and performed their executions in mystery,” said Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Director at Amnesty International.
“The use of the death penalty towards folks who were below 18 at the time of the crime is precisely prohibited under international human rights law and is a flagrant attack on children’s rights. It is long late for Iranian parliamentarians to position a give-up on this harrowing state of affairs by amending the penal code to prohibit using the death penalty against all people who are under 18 at the time of the offense.”
Iran remains the top executioner of children internationally. As a nation, birthday celebration of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Iran is legally obliged to deal with everybody under the age of 18 as a child and ensure that they are never subjected to the loss of life penalty or life imprisonment.
Mehdi Sohrabifar and Amin Sedaghat had been held in a juvenile correction center in Shiraz in 2017. On 24 April, they were transferred to Adilabad jail, apparently without understanding the cause. The same day, their families were granted a visit with them, but they were not instructed that it was to become in preparation for their execution.
The subsequent day, on 25 April, the households abruptly received a call from Iran’s Legal Medicine Organization, a state forensic institute, informing them of the executions and asking them to collect their bodies.
The felony proceedings leading to the 2 boys’ conviction and sentence have been unfair and flagrantly violated the principles of fair justice. Following their arrest, they have been held for 2 months in a police detention center, where they said they had been overwhelmed. They additionally had no access to an attorney at the research level.
The practice of subjecting youngsters to police questioning in the absence of a dad or mum or legal professional violates the Convention on the Child’s Rights, which affords that children in conflict with the law must be guaranteed prompt legal assistance.
Amnesty International has recorded the execution of ninety-seven individuals in Iran who were under 18 at the time of the crime between 1990 and 2018. More than ninety others are liable to execution.
The reality that Mehdi Sohrabifar and Amin Sedaghat’s executions have been no longer made public earlier than their instances had been made recognized to Amnesty International reinforces the enterprise’s difficulty that the actual number of executions of juvenile offenders within the U. S. is certainly higher than the discernment it has recorded. Juvenile offenders currently on death row are also prone to be executed in mystery if their cases aren’t brought to the attention of human rights organizations for public campaigning and advocacy.
“We have diagnosed a fashion wherein Iran’s authorities are carrying out executions of minor offenders in mystery and without giving improve notice to the families, reputedly in a planned attempt and avoid international outrage. This makes it all the more important for influential international actors, along with the EU, to increase their diplomatic and public interventions to pressure Iran to end the usage of the loss of life penalty against juvenile offenders,” stated Philip Luther.
Many have spent prolonged periods on the loss of life row, in some instances, greater than a decade. Some have had their executions scheduled and postponed time and again, adding to their torment. Such conditions of uncertainty inflicting intense discomfort and mental distress amount to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
The use of the death penalty for rape is not accredited underneath international regulation, which states that its use ought to be restrained to the maximum severe crimes regarding intentional killings.
Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all instances without exception, no matter the nature of the crime, the characteristics of the wrongdoer, or the method utilized by the nation to kill the prisoner. The death penalty is a contravention of the proper to life and the least cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment.
