A teenager is expected to be executed in Iran in the next few days. All emphases mine.
Iran: Imminent execution for teen offender
Tehran, 23 June (AKI) – A young man who allegedly committed a crime when he was 15 years old is due to be executed in Iran in the next few days.
Salah Ghasseh, 18, will be the second ethnic Kurd youth to be hanged in the past six months at the Sanandaj prison in the area known as Iranian Kurdistan.
Last December, Makwan Moloudzadeh, also an ethnic Kurd, was arrested at age 17 for allegedly having homosexual relations four years earlier. He was hanged last December at the age of 21.
Since the Revolutionary Guard has been engaged in what is essentially a war on Kurdish dissidents in four of Iran’s provinces, the Islamic Republic has broadly arrested and executed Kurds with little interest in even appearing judicial. That’s one of the reasons AKI’s use of “allegedly” in describing the “crimes” of the two teens caught my eye.
Iran has ratified international treaties including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbids capital punishment for underage youth who commit crimes.
In Iran young men are considered to be adults from the age of 14 and young women from the age of eight and a half, and therefore responsible for any crimes that they commit.
There are now 124 prisoners in death row who committed crimes when they were under 18 years of age, say human rights groups.
Amnesty International said in its latest report, that at least 335 people were executed in Iran in 2007, seven of them children.
Of course, that UNICEF treaty Iran ratified also guarantees a child the freedoms of thought, conscience, religion, opinion, and expression, but I get the feeling the mullahs don’t give those rights any more attention than the ones protecting children from abuse at the hands of the criminal justice system.
It [Amnesty International] said sentences of flogging and amputation continued to be implemented in Iran, and torture and ill-treatment were widespread in prisons and detention centres.
Iran has one of the highest rates of capital punishment in the world. The government insists that it is a deterrence for crime.
It seems odd that Iran would still be murdering people for adultery and homosexuality if in fact capital punishment was deterring people from committing such “crimes.” It also seems odd that anyone in Iran would be executed for homosexual acts considering that Ahmadinejad says there are no homosexuals in Iran.
Filed under: Iran, Justice | Tagged: Capital Punishment, Child Abuse, Iran, Kurds, Sanandaj, UNICEF
Iranian Dinner Theater – a play by Joseph Bales
Ahmadinejad: There are no homosexuals in Iran.
(phone ringing)
Ahmadinejad: (answering phone) Hello. What? A homosexual? Execute him!
(sound of lever being pulled and neck snapping)
Ahmedinejad: (still on phone) Is he dead? Good.
Ahmedinejad: (to assembled crowd) Okay, NOW there are no homosexuals in Iran.
(curtain falls as phone rings again)
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