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Adnkronos
International
 Tehran,
6 May (AKI) - A 20-year-old
Iranian is due to be
executed on Wednesday for a
crime he allegedly committed
as a teenager despite
international efforts to
save his life.
Behnoud
Shojai was found guilty of
murder after allegedly
killing another young man in
a park in Tehran during a
fight three years ago.
He
reportedly stabbed the man
with a shard of glass after
he was threatened with a
knife.
Behnoud,
17-years-old at the time of
the crime, will be hanged in
what is Iran's second
execution of an alleged
criminal who was underage at
the time of the crime.
On Monday
the European parliament
asked Iranian authorities to
suspend the execution of
Behnoud, while Amnesty
International has also
appealed to Iran's supreme
leader Ayatollah Sayed Ali
Khamenei and president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to
commute the death sentence.
Iran has
ratified international
treaties including the
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.
Last
weekend 12 people were
hanged in the Iranian cities
of Ahwaz, Birjand and
Mashhad.
The group
was accused of drug
trafficking, assault with a
weapon and rape.
Last week
80 death sentences were
issued by the tribunal in
Mashhad, Iran's second
largest city, 850 kilometres
east of Tehran, said Iran's
privately owned news agency
Fars.
Eighty-four people have been
executed in Iran since 2008,
while 317 people were
executed in Iran in 2007.
Iran has
one of the highest rates of
capital punishment in the
world.
A report
by Amnesty International
says that since 1990, Iran
has executed at least 28
child offenders, six of them
in 2007.
At least
86 child offenders are
currently on death row in
Iran, although Amnesty
International says this
number may be higher as at
least a further 15 Afghan
child offenders have
reportedly been sentenced to
death recently.
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