Amnesty International, on Friday, October 18, issued a statement urging Iran’s regime to not execute Mohammad Reza Azizi, a 21-year-old who was only 17 at the time of the crime he was charged with.
Amnesty International stated that Iranian authorities plan to carry out Azizi’s execution on Monday, October 21, in Shiraz.
The international human rights organization condemned Azizi’s death sentence as a violation of international laws that prohibit executing individuals who were under 18 at the time of the alleged crime, a commitment to which Iran’s regime is also a signatory.
Mohammad Reza Azizi, a juvenile offender incarcerated in Shiraz Central Prison, was arrested and sentenced to qisas (retribution) for “premeditated murder.”
Azizi, born on August 24, 2003, was arrested on September 19, 2020, when he was just 17 years and 27 days old.
In response, Sara Hashash, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said:
“The planned execution of Mohammed Reza Azizi puts on full display the Iranian authorities’ cruelty. Their repeated flagrant disregard for the right to life is an abhorrent assault on children’s rights. Using the death penalty against someone who was a child at the time of the crime is prohibited under international human rights and customary law and violates Iran’s international obligations.”
Amnesty International has called for the immediate cancellation of Azizi’s death sentence and urged the regime to give him a retrial, fully adhering to international standards, without resorting to the death penalty.
Amnesty International claims to have reviewed the legal documents of the case and found that the Iranian Legal Medicine Organization, under the supervision of the judiciary, concluded—without explaining the circumstances of the crime—that Azizi had reached mental maturity at the time of the offense.
The “No to Executions on Tuesdays” campaign, made up of prisoners on hunger strike in over 22 Iranian prisons, issued a statement on October 15, announcing that more than 36 people had been executed the previous week. Among them were two juveniles, Mehdi Barahoui and Ali Shirvani, aged 17 and 15 at the time of their arrest, who were executed in violation of the “Convention on the Rights of the Child.”
The Iranian regime has repeatedly sentenced juvenile offenders to death, and Iran has the highest number of executions of minors in the world.
Despite the fact that the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibit the sentencing and execution of individuals under 18, the Iranian regime continues to enforce such sentences, justifying it as being in accordance with Sharia law and domestic regulations.
