AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL AI Index: MDE 13/082/2008
12 June 2008
Further Information on UA 146/08 (MDE 13/074/2008, 30 May 2008) – Imminent execution/legal concern
IRAN Mohammad Feda’i (m), aged 21, juvenile offender
Juvenile offender Mohammad Feda’i was granted a one-month reprieve on 10 June, the day before he was scheduled to be executed, to allow time for his family to negotiate with the family of the boy he was convicted of killing, and to agree on financial compensation in exchange for pardoning him.
Mohammad Feda’i had been due to be executed on 18 April 2007, but his execution was stayed because he had received inadequate legal representation during his trial. His request for a retrial was rejected, and his execution was rescheduled for 11 June.
In a recent letter made public on 7 June, Mohammad Feda’i said that officials had kicked and tortured him, to the point that one night he agreed to sign – by way of a fingerprint – a confession without knowledge of its content. In his letter he wrote, “I was beaten and flogged repeatedly … They hanged me from the ceiling [and] left me with no hope of living.” The courts had taken no account of the fact that Mohammad Feda’i had only confessed after being tortured.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
As a state party to both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Iran has undertaken not to execute people convicted of crimes committed when they were under the age of 18. However, since 1990 Iran has executed at least 30 juvenile offenders, seven of them in 2007 and two in 2008.
A Kurdish boy, Mohammad Hassanzadeh, believed to be aged 16 or 17, was hanged in Sanandaj prison on 10 June. He had been convicted of
murdering a 10-year-old boy; he had been aged about 15 at the time see Kurdish boy executed in Iran, at:
and to diplomatic representatives of Iran accredited to your country.
PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. Check with the International Secretariat, or your section office, if sending appeals after 24 July 2008.
