Lawyer of juvenile offender asks Judiciary to stop execution
Washington, 25 August (IranVNC)—The lawyer of a 27-year-old juvenile offender on death row near the central city of Esfahan has asked Iran’s Judiciary to call off his client’s execution, saying his he was not mentally stable when he committed the crime ten years ago.
By: IranVNC
Published: Monday, August 25, 2008
17:16GMT—1:16PM/EST
IRAN – EXECUTION – JUVENILE
Washington, 25 August (IranVNC)—The lawyer of a 27-year-old juvenile offender on death row near the central city of Esfahan has asked Iran’s Judiciary to call off his client’s execution, saying his he was not mentally stable when he committed the crime ten years ago.
The accused, identified as “Bahman,” was arrested and jailed in Esfahan’s Zarinshahr at the age of 15, after he confessed to killing his 70-year-old grandmother, the conservative daily E’temaad newspaper reports. His execution is set to take place this year.
The newspaper, quoting Bahman’s case file, reported that the youth had turned himself in to the police the morning after stabbing his grandmother with a knife because “I knew my grandmother didn’t want to live any more”.
Bahman was originally sentenced to five years in a rehabilitation center after psychologists found that he was suffering from severe melancholia and was experiencing hallucinations.
But branch 33 of Iran’s Supreme Court overturned the sentence and transferred the case to the second branch of the General Court of Zarinshahr, where he was sentenced death without a psychological review.
Bahman’s mother and maternal uncle had appealed for his death sentence to be forgiven, but the court ruled in favor of three maternal aunts and two maternal uncles who insisted that the execution be carried out.
Under Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, the surviving relatives of a victim may decide to spare a murderer’s life in exchange for the payment of diyeh [blood money].
International bodies and human rights groups have repeatedly called on Iran to abolish the death penalty for juvenile offenders.
Today, the European Union again called on Iran to “consider an appropriate way of dealing with juvenile offenders, such as youth courts and sentences designed mainly to be educational and to facilitate their social rehabilitation.”
On 30 July, nine international human rights groups reiterated this demand, saying the situation of juvenile offenders in Iran has reached “crisis levels”.
Iran is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention of the Rights of the Child, both of which outlaw this practice.
Sources: E’temaad Newspaper in Persian, Presidency of the Council of the European Union website
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