Iran is facing international condemnation from human rights organizations following the execution of a 17-year-old, Hamidreza Azari, for murder in the town of Sabzevar. The incident has reignited concerns about Iran’s practice of hanging individuals for crimes committed when they were minors.
The execution occurred on Friday (Nov 24) in a prison in Sabzevar, Razavi Khorasan province, as reported by the Norway-based Hengaw and Iran Human Rights (IHR) groups.
Azari, the sole child in his family, had been employed as a scrap worker. Hengaw and IHR, citing official documents, revealed that Azari was 16 years old at the time of the crime and 17 when executed. Both groups argued that Iran’s actions violated the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which defines a child as anyone under the age of 18.
According to IHR, at least 68 minors have been executed in Iran since 2010. Mahmood-Amiry Moghaddam, the Director of IHR, highlighted the contradiction in Iran’s laws, where 18 is the minimum age for obtaining a driver’s license, yet the penal code considers 15 as the age for criminal executions. The group accused Iranian media of deliberately misrepresenting the executed individual’s age to evade accountability.
Azari’s execution is part of a broader trend of increased capital punishment in Iran. On Thursday (Nov 23), another execution, unrelated to Azari’s case, involved a man in his early 20s linked to protests in September 2022 triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, while in custody for an alleged dress code violation.
Human rights campaigners argue that Iran is currently undergoing an unprecedented wave of executions, seen as an attempt to intimidate the public in the aftermath of nationwide protests.
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