Human Rights Watch in a report called "The Last Holdouts: Ending the Juvenile Death Penalty in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan, and Yemen" wrote:
"Since January 2005 five states are known to have executed at least 32 juvenile offenders: Iran (26), Saudi Arabia (2), Sudan (2), Pakistan (1), and Yemen (1)."Iran has executed 26 juvenile offenders which accounts for the largest number of executions since January 2005.
In Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two countries that account for the largest number of executions of juvenile offenders, these sentences are the result of deliberate state policies to retain the juvenile death penalty, combined with criminal justice systems that fail to provide children with fundamental protections against unfair trials.In these countries fair trial does not have any meaning. For example in Iranian corrupted judicial system, confession under torture is the basis of sentence which is in violation of every international law. At the meantime about 140 juvenile offenders are in death row in Iran.
Iran is a state party to both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child but in capital cases they keep juvenile offenders in prison till they reach to 18 years old and then execute them. In Islamic Iran penal code, boys at age 15 years old and girls at 9 years old consider adult; based on Sharia law definition they reach to the age of puberty. Unfortunately they have executed some juveniles who committed offenses when they were under 15 years old (boys).
The majority of juvenile executions in Iran are for hadd crimes or for intentional murder. Intentional murder, which includes “cases where the murderer intentionally makes an action that is inherently lethal, even if he does not intend to kill the victim,” is considered to be a crime punishable by retribution in kind (qisas-e-nafs). While the judiciary is responsible for carrying out the trial and implementing the sentence in qisas cases, Iranian law treats these cases as private disputes between two civil parties, where the state facilitates the resolution of the dispute. The victim’s survivors retain the right to claim retribution in kind, to pardon the killer, or to accept compensation in exchange for giving up the right to claim retribution.It seems Islamic Republic of Iran doesn't have willing to put an end to juvenile executions. Even in a new draft bill that has been studying in the Iranian parliament, there are many issues that it won't resolve.
In July 2006 the Iranian parliament gave an initial reading to a draft Juvenile Crimes Investigation Act that officials have said would end executions for juvenile offenders, but which actually still leaves judges with discretion to sentence juvenile offenders to death. Article 31(3) of the proposed law would allow but not require judges to reduce a sentence of death or life imprisonment against juvenile defendants ages 15 to 18 to a term of imprisonment ranging from two to eight years in a juvenile correctional facility. In addition, article 33 of the proposed legislation makes clear that reduction of sentences in qisas and hadd crimes shall be applied only when the judge determines that “the complete mental maturity of the defendant is in doubt.”Instead of these horrific laws that allow death sentences, Iran should halt executions now and forever.
