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Iran Focus
 London, Aug. 25 - The
human rights organisation Amnesty International
expressed concern on Thursday at the imminent execution of two minors in Iran, who have been
sentenced to death by hanging.
The group said that Iran had already
executed seven children this year and called on the Islamic Republic to
abide by its international commitments.
“Iran has executed
at least seven child offenders in 2005”, Amnesty International said in a
statement.
A seventeen-year-old musician in Iran is facing
imminent execution in public after his death sentence was upheld by Iran’s
clergy-dominated Supreme Court. The teenage boy, identified by his first
name Sina, was found guilty of murdering a man
after a dispute over cannabis last October, according to the state-run
daily Etemaad.
Separately, the Supreme Court also gave the green light for the hanging of
a 16-year-old schoolboy in Tehran. The boy,
identified only by his first name Mostafa, was
convicted of killing a man in a scuffle that began when the boy tried to
save a girl who was being harassed by the drunken man.
Mostafa, who had no criminal record, told the
Islamic judge that when he saw the drunken man insult and harass a young
girl near his home in Tehran Pars district, he intervened and tried to save
the girl, but the foul-mouthed man began to beat him. In the brawl that
followed, Mostafa killed the man.
“Most recently, Kayhan newspaper reported that a
17-year-old was among four men under the age of 23, named only as A.P.,
B.K., H.K. and H.J., who were executed on 23 August in Bandar Abbas, southern Iran”, Amnesty said
in its statement.
"Iran's defiance of the international ban on executing child offenders
is a growing concern and calls into question Iran's willingness to abide by
international human rights standards”, Amnesty International’s UK Director
Kate Allen said.
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