Young Man to be Executed for Crime Committed as a Teen, Amnesty Warns

A 20-year-old man who was found guilty of a murder that occurred when he was only 17 could face execution in Fars Province in a matter of days, Amnesty International has warned.

According to the human rights organization,  Hossein Shahbazi is due to be executed on June 28, despite the fact that this is illegal under international law. 

“Using the death penalty against someone who was a child at the time of the crime is prohibited under international human rights law and violates Iran’s international obligations,” said Diana Eltahawy, Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at the human rights organization. “We also call on the international community, including UN bodies and the EU and its member states, to urgently intervene to save this young man’s life.”

The sentence is also illegal because the conviction was based on evidence extracted from torture. Amnesty International has called for the Iranian judicial authorities to withdraw the sentence and ensure he is entitled to a fair retrial.

Shahbazi was arrested on December 30, 2018 and sentenced to death on January 13, 2019 by Branch 3 of the Criminal Court of Fars Province.

Shahbazi was also barred from seeing his lawyer or his family for 11 days after his arrest. He was interrogated at a Shiraz detention center, where a “confession” for his crime was obtained. After the confession, he was allowed to meet with his mother, who confirmed he had suffered serious bruising on his face and had lost a significant amount of weight.

Although he was a child at the time, an assessment carried out by the state-run Legal Medicine Organization deemed him to have reached maturity, and the Supreme Court upheld his conviction and the death penalty in June 2020.

Shahbazi is currently imprisoned in Adelabad prison in Shiraz.

The Amnesty International report highlights that at least three juvenile offenders were executed in 2020.