|
IRAN: WOMAN EXECUTED FOR MURDER COMMITTED AS A MINOR
May 1, 2009: Iran hanged a young woman who was convicted of murder when she was a minor,
drawing condemnation from international human rights groups who have sought to end capital punishment for juvenile offenders.
Authorities executed the 23-year-old woman in northern Iran without informing her lawyer or allowing the family to be present, said the lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaei.
She was 17 at the time the crime was committed, in 2003.
"Iran continues to deny that it executes juvenile offenders, but the secret nature of this execution demonstrates that the government knows that these killings are illegal and shameful in the eyes of the world," said Zama Coursen-Neff, deputy director of the children's rights division at Human Rights Watch.
The prisoner executed, Delara Darabi, initially pleaded guilty to killing her father's cousin, but later retracted her confession and said her boyfriend carried out the killing. She told a judge that she had initially confessed because her boyfriend told her that, as a minor, she would not be executed and she could save him from being put to death, her lawyer said.
Her boyfriend, who was 19 at the time of the killing, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for complicity in murder.
Iranian law requires authorities to inform a prisoner's lawyer at least 48 hours before an execution, but Mostafaei said he was not given warning that the sentence was to be carried out.
The lawyer said Darabi called her parents just moments before the execution. He quoted her as saying, "Oh, Mother, I see the hangman's noose in front of me. They are going to execute me. Please save me."
The woman's parents were not allowed inside the prison to meet her for a last time, Mostafaei said.
"She was denied a legal right guaranteed under the law," he said. "The hasty execution and the ignoring of legal provisions suggests that some authorities were happy to put an end to her life," he said.
Mostafaei said the execution of juvenile offenders is a "gross violation of international law" and a "breach of Iran's international obligations and commitments."
According to Amnesty International, the execution of Delara Darabi brings the number of executions in Iran this year to 140. (Sources: AP, Amnesty International, 01/05/2009)
|
