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IRAN: LAWYERS URGE AN END TO EXECUTION OF JUVENILE OFFENDERS
February 4, 2009: a group of 150 Iranian lawyers addressed a letter to the country's judiciary chief, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, urging him to place a moratorium on the execution of juvenile offenders in the Islamic Republic. According to the semi-official ISNA news agency, the lawyers also asked Shahroudi to stop the execution of a man sentenced to death for a murder he allegedly committed when he was 15. Bahman Salimian, 27, is due to be hanged in the central city of Esfahan.
The 150 lawyers, in a letter carried by Etemad-e Melli and other newspapers, said issuing death sentences for juvenile offenders like Salimian was against the law and that he may have had "negative thoughts caused by depression" at the time of the crime.
"We lawyers are asking you to order a stop of the implementation of such sentences as soon as possible," the letter to judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Sharoudi said.
Etemad-e Melli did not name any of the lawyers who signed it nor give details of the murder Salimian was convicted of. (Sources: Iranvnc.com, Javno.com, 04/02/2009)
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