Iran: 18-year-old facing imminent execution for crime committed as minor

Iran Focus: Tehran, Dec. 28 – A teenager who is currently in one of Iran’s Centers for Reform and Education (Juvenile Prison) is to be hanged to death within three weeks for a crime allegedly committed when he was fourteen. The boy only identified as Mohammad T. was accused of fatally stabbing another boy who was involved in a scuffle with his brother. Mohammad M. died from his wounds in hospital on October 17, 2000. Iran Focus

Tehran, Dec. 28 – A teenager who is currently in one of Iran’s Centers for Reform and Education (Juvenile Prison) is to be hanged to death within three weeks for a crime allegedly committed when he was fourteen.

The boy only identified as Mohammad T. was accused of fatally stabbing another boy who was involved in a scuffle with his brother. Mohammad M. died from his wounds in hospital on October 17, 2000.

The acting judge at the time, cleric Mohammad Sultan Hematyar, sentenced Mohammad to spend time in the Center for Reform and Education until he turned eighteen and then be executed.

Under Iranian law, girls above the age of nine and boys above the age of fifteen are considered to be adults and can be executed for capital offences.

The sentence was later approved by Iran’s Supreme Court which called for him to be hanged by the end of the Iranian calendar month. Mohammad now faces imminent execution.

Increasingly under international pressure, the Iranian regime keeps children on death row in Juvenile Prison until they turn 18.