Iran executed man arrested for murder aged 17

Published on : 24/11/2021 – 13:12

Iran, the second country in the world after China to use the death penalty, on Wednesday (November 24) executed a high school student aged 17 at the time of his arrest, despite calls from international human rights organizations to give it up.

The execution of Arman Abdolali, 25, took place at dawn in the prison of Rajai Shahr, near Tehran, in accordance with the “qesas”, ie the “law of retaliation” requested by the family of the victim, announced the site of the judicial authority Mizan Online.

However, on October 11, Amnesty had urged Iran to renounce the execution of this man sentenced to death for the murder in 2015 of his friend, aged 19, after a trial described by this NGO as “grossly unfair”.

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Arman Abdolali was found guilty of the murder of his friend “after a trial based on ‘confessions’ obtained under torture”, Amnesty denounced. The body of the victim was never found, the accused had declared to have thrown it in a trash can.

“This young man was not a criminal. Like the victim, he came from a respectable family. In prison, Arman continued his studies to obtain a master’s degree in education,” Hadi Sadeghi told reporters in October. , a judicial official.

“The two families knew each other and the victim and the accused intended to marry,” he added. According to her confession, an argument broke out when she told him of her desire to leave the country.

246 people executed in Iran in 2020

According to Mizan, the victim’s mother said in an interview that she would forgive Arman if he showed her the location of her daughter’s body.

The man was sentenced to death again in 2020 during a new trial, but the court ruled that the teenager was responsible for his actions in the absence of evidence to the contrary, Amnesty reported.

In early 2020, several Iranian artists shared a message on Instagram, calling on the victim’s family to “waive the application of the sentence”. By law, it is up to the family of the victim to forgive the accused or not. If she refuses, the death penalty is applied.

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The execution of Arman Abdolali had been postponed several times, in 2020, then in October and November 2021, but it had been stopped following international mobilizations, according to the organization.

In 2020, 246 people were executed in Iran, according to Amnesty. This country is regularly condemned by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Western NGOs for the executions of people convicted of crimes committed when they were minors, in violation of the International Convention on Human Rights. ‘child, ratified by Tehran.

The Islamic Republic of Iran “is doing its best to reduce the number of executions of juvenile offenders to ‘zero’,” Majid Tafréchi, deputy director of international affairs at the Judicial Authority, told AFP in July. in charge of human rights.

With AFP