The UN, EU and rights groups accused Iran of flouting its international obligations after Tehran’s execution Wednesday of a young man convicted for a murder he allegedly committed as a minor.
Arman Abdolali, 25, was executed at dawn in Rajai Shahr prison near the Iranian capital over the killing of his girlfriend, despite international appeals to call off the execution.
His execution was in line with the “qesas” eye-for-an-eye style justice demanded by the victim’s family, the Iranian judiciary’s Mizan Online website said.
Amnesty International had appealed on October 11 for Iran to call off the execution of Abdolali, who was arrested in 2014 and convicted the next year of murdering his girlfriend, Ghazaleh Shakour.
The London-based rights group said he had been sentenced to death twice but the execution was stopped both times.
It described his sentencing in December 2015 as being the result of “a grossly unfair trial” by a court that “relied on torture-tainted ‘confessions'”.
Mahmood Amiry Moghaddam, head of Oslo-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR) which monitors executions in Iran, described Abdolali’s execution as an “international crime”.
“Besides being executed for an alleged offence committed at under 18 years of age which is a violation of international law, Arman was sentenced to death based on confessions extracted under torture, without a fair trial and due process,” he said in a statement.
Moghaddam said the “repeated transfers for execution and then returning him without any explanation” constituted “psychological torture”.
He called for President Ebrahim Raisi, judiciary chief before his election this year, to be brought to account for Abdolali’s execution.
– ‘Deeply alarming and shocking’ –
A spokeswoman for the UN Human Rights Office said it was “deeply alarming and shocking that his hanging went ahead despite interventions by numerous parties” that included direct contact between the UN and Iran.
“We also deplore that over the last two months Abdolali had been transferred to solitary confinement six times ahead of his scheduled execution, postponed on each occasion before going ahead,” she added.
A spokesperson for EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said: “The European Union condemns this execution in the strongest terms.”
The EU “recalls yet again that death sentences for crimes committed by persons below the age of 18 are contrary to international obligations under the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child”, he said.
Iran is a party to both, the statement added.
Abdolali was sentenced to death again in 2020 in a retrial, where the court ruled the teenager was responsible in the absence of evidence to the contrary, Amnesty reported.
IHR said Abdolali confessed at the time of his arrest, but a body was never found and he later retracted. It said he was 17 years old at the time of the alleged murder.
Germany’s human rights commissioner Baerbel Kofler said she was “shocked” by the execution, pointing to “considerable doubts that the rule of law was observed in Arman Abdolali’s case”.
France also condemned the execution, saying it is “contrary to international commitments to which Iran has subscribed”.
It called on Iran and all countries to abolish the death penalty.
– ‘Not a criminal’ –
Abdolali had been transferred to solitary confinement at 8 pm Tuesday ahead of execution and was not given the chance of a final meeting with his family, IHR said.
Hadi Sadeghi, a judicial official, was quoted as saying by Iranian media in October: “This young man was not a criminal.”
“Like the victim, he came from a respectable family. In prison, Arman continued his studies to obtain a master’s degree in education,” he said.
The Islamic republic executed at least 246 people last year, retaining its place as the second most prolific user of capital punishment in the world after China, according to Amnesty.
IHR said at least 64 juvenile offenders have been executed in Iran over the past 10 years, with at least four executed in 2020.
In July, a senior Iranian official told AFP the Islamic republic was doing its best to bring down to zero the number of executions of child offenders.
“We are going to the zero point,” said Majid Tafreshi of the state-run High Council for Human Rights.
