Executing juveniles is strictly prohibited by international law

In the past month, Amnesty issued several updates on juvenile offenders, who were about to face the gallows. Because of that, names like Salar Shadizadi, Saman Naseem, Alireza Shahi or Milad Azimi might all sound familiar to you – unfortunately. There have been some good news and some bad news, as well.

As of the good, the execution of Salar Shadizadi has been postponed. This is to allow the murder victim’s family to pardon him. However, Salar remains at risk. The authorities should grant him a fair retrial, making sure that there will not be a recourse to the death penalty.

As of the bad news: sadly, Alireza Shahi, a 25-year-old man was executed in the morning of 24 November 2015.

By now, Saman Naseem has become a person, whose fate we have been following closely. In this year’s Write for Rights campaign, you might already have signed a card for him or you might do so with your local group within the next days. Amnesty International is asking the Iranian regime to grant Saman a fair trial.

However, it seems that Iran does not want to give up on its notoriety for topping the global table for executing juvenile offenders.

This is also illustrated in the latest news: Iran re-sentenced two young men to death for crimes committed when they were under 18 years old. This happened after their retrials concluded that they had reached “mental maturity” at the time of the crime.

Sajad Sanjari was first sentenced to death in January 2012 after being convicted of murder for fatally stabbing a man in Kermanshah Province when he was 15. He is now 20 years old.

Hamid Ahmadi, now aged 24, was first sent to the death row in August 2009 in connection with the fatal stabbing of a young man. This had happened during a fight between five boys in northern Gilan Province. Hamid was 17 years old at the time.

In this year alone, Iran is believed to have executed at least four juvenile offenders, but this number is likely to be higher.

Shamefully, Iran is going to appear at the next session of Committee on the Rights of the Child very soon (on 11 and 12 January 2016). Knowing about the above mentioned cases, the Committee might raise further concerns about Iran’s cruel practice of putting juvenile offenders to death.

>>TAKE ACTION! Send a card to Saman Naseem and write an appeal letter to the authorities regarding Salar Shadizadi and Sajad Sanjari.

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