International law prohibits the use of the death penalty for crimes committed by people younger than 18
 

* International law prohibits the use of the death penalty for crimes committed by people younger than 18, yet some countries continue to execute child offenders or sentence them to death. Since 1990, executions of child offenders in eight countries: China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United States of America, and Yemen.  Yemen and Zimbabwe raised the minimum age to 18 in 1994, as did China in 1997 and Pakistan in 2000.  

Five countries – China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Pakistan and the USA – are known to have executed child offenders since 2000. Child offenders are currently under sentence of death in at least two other countries - the Philippines and Sudan. 

Iran 

Iran is a party to the ICCPR and the CRC. 

Amnesty International has recorded 10 executions of child offenders in Iran since 1990. Most of these reports have been based on reports in the Iranian news media. 

One execution was reported in 1990, three in 1992, one in 1999 and one in 2000.(11)

On 29 May 2001 the official news agency IRNA reported from the city of Ilam that Mehrdad Yousefi, aged 18, had been hanged for a crime committed two years earlier. 

Two further executions were carried out in early 2004. Mohammad Zadeh and Salman were reportedly executed on 25 January and 12 May 2004 respectively. Both had been 17 at the time of the crimes. 

On 15 August 2004 a 16-year-old girl, Ateqeh Rajabi, was reportedly executed in Neka in the northern Iranian province of Mazandaran for "acts incompatible with chastity" (amal-e manafe-ye ‘ofat). Ateqeh Rajabi was reportedly publicly hanged on a street in the city centre of Neka. 

According to reports, Ateqeh Rajabi had been sentenced to death approximately three months earlier. During her trial, at which she was reportedly not represented by a lawyer, the judge allegedly severely criticized her dress, harshly reprimanding her. It is alleged that Ateqeh Rajabi was mentally ill both at the time of her crime and during her trial proceedings.  

The case reportedly attracted the attention of the Head of the Judiciary for the Mazandaran province, who ensured that the case be heard promptly by the Supreme Court. In Iran, all death sentences have to be upheld by the Supreme Court before they can be implemented.  

The death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court, and Ateqeh Rajabi was publicly executed on 15 August. According to Peyk-e Iran newspaper, the lower court judge who issued the original sentence was the person who put the noose around her head as she went to the gallows. 

It was further reported that although Ateqeh Rajabi’s national identity card stated that she was 16 years old, the Mazandaran Judiciary announced at her execution that her age was 22. 

The co-defendant of Ateqeh Rajabi, an unnamed man, was reportedly sentenced to 100 lashes. He was released after this sentence was carried out.  

Some death sentences have been commuted. In November 1999 Azizullah Shenwari, then around 11 years old, was abducted near his home in Landi Kotal, Khyber Agency, Pakistan, and was reportedly used by drug traffickers to carry narcotics. A year later his family received a letter from a jail in Yazd, Iran, informing them that he had been sentenced to death for drug trafficking. With the help of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission, his family raised the case with the Iranian consulate, and in June 2001 Amnesty International members sent urgent appeals urging the Iranian authorities to commute the death sentence. 

In July 2001 a judicial official denied that Azizullah Shenwari had been sentenced to death, while a letter from the Iranian authorities to Amnesty International stated that the sentence had been commuted. In September 2001, possibly as a result of the international attention to the case, Azizullah Shenwari's uncle was able to meet Azizullah Shenwari.

In August 2004 Amnesty International learned that an appeal court in 2003 had commuted the death sentence to 10 years' imprisonment. 

Iranian representatives told the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in May 2000 that death sentences imposed on child offenders had not been carried out and that the death penalty was not “"imposed on children under 18”". The Committee strongly recommended that Iran “"take immediate steps to halt and abolish by law the imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed by persons under 18”".(12) 

A bill to raise the minimum age to 18 is reportedly under consideration in Iran. Amnesty International is seeking details of the legislative status of the bill. 

* A bill raising the minimum age for the imposition of the death penalty to 18 was approved by the Iranian parliament in December 2003 and is now awaiting approval by the country's Council of Guardians. Justice department says Iran has drawn up a bill, expected to be approved by parliament, scrapping the death penalty and lashings for offenders under the age of 18, a justice department spokesman said. Not only would minors escape the most severe sentences for serious crimes, but neither the death penalty nor whipping would come into effect after they come of age, Jamal Karimi-Rad said. This would be an important step, no? 

* Amnesty says characteristics of youth such as immaturity, impulsiveness, poor judgment, susceptibility to peer pressure, and a vulnerability to the domination or example of elders, together with a young person's capacity for rehabilitation and change, lie behind the global ban on the use of the death penalty for the crimes of children. Scientific evidence indicates that brain development continues into a person's 20s. Would you agree? 

* Why are minors a special case then? 

Why regime doing this? Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi, head of the justice department, quashed a stoning sentence for a woman convicted of adultery and an amputation sentence for a 20-year-old thief. In May, he also published a circular banning torture and upholding citizen rights, which the then reformist-controlled parliament passed into law. There has been no record of any stonings in Iran since late 2002.  Why?