Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Dec. 10 Iran publicly hanged a young Afghan on Saturday for a crime he was alleged to have committed as a minor. Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Dec. 10 Iran publicly hanged a young Afghan on Saturday for a crime he was alleged to have committed as a minor.
Rostam Tajik, 20 years old, was hanged in a public park in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, the state-run news agency reported on Saturday. The sentence was carried out in the presence of judicial officials.
Tajik was sentenced to death for the murder of a woman on May 13, 2001, when he was just 16 years old.
A report in the semi-official daily Kayhan said on Tuesday that Tajik had initially fled to the town of Qazvin, west of Tehran, after the incident but was later apprehended.
On Friday, Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, had urged Tehran not to proceed with the execution of Tajik.
According to the international human rights organisation Amnesty International who had also appealed for his sentence to be commuted, Iran has executed at least seven juvenile offenders in 2005 including two minors who were under 18 at the time of their execution.
