Iran: Stop Child Execution

Since January 2005 five states are known to have executed at least 32 juvenile offenders: Iran (26), Saudi Arabia (2), Sudan (2), Pakistan (1), and Yemen (1).

Iran has executed 26 juvenile offenders which accounts for the largest number of executions since January 2005.

In Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two countries that account for the largest number of executions of juvenile offenders, these sentences are the result of deliberate state policies to retain the juvenile death penalty, combined with criminal justice systems that fail to provide children with fundamental protections against unfair trials.

In these countries fair trial does not have any meaning. For example in Iranian corrupted judicial system, confession under torture is the basis of sentence which is in violation of international laws. At the meantime about 140 juvenile offenders are in death row in Iran.

Iran is a state party to both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child but in capital cases they keep juvenile offenders in prison till they reach to 18 years old and then execute them. In Islamic Iran penal code, boys at age 15 years old and girls at 9 years old consider adult; based on Sharia law definition they reach to the age of puberty. Unfortunately they have executed some juveniles who committed offenses when they were under 15 years old (boys).

It seems Islamic Republic of Iran doesn't have willing to put an end to juvenile executions. Even in a new draft bill that has been studying in the Iranian parliament, there are many issues that it won't resolve.

http://stop.torturing.us/2008/09/horrific-laws-permit-juvenile.html