On July 8, 2008, 24 international and regional human rights organizations called on Iranian authorities to spare four youths facing execution and to stop imposing the death penalty for crimes committed by juvenile offenders – persons who commit crimes while under the age of 18 – and to uphold their international obligation to enforce the absolute prohibition on the death penalty.

Iran executed 16-year-old Mohammad Hassanzadeh, an Iranian Kurd on June 10, 2008 for a crime committed when he was 14. Four other juvenile offenders are at risk of execution between July 11 and July 25. The organizations called on the head of Iran’s judiciary to suspend these four executions immediately.

Behnoud Shojaee and Mohammad Feda’i face execution on July 11. Both were to be executed on June 11, 2008 but received last-minute, month-long reprieves to give them more time to seek pardons from the families of their victims.

At least two other juvenile offenders, Salah Taseb and Sa’eed Jazee, are also at risk of execution in the coming days. According to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran, Salah Taseb, from Sanandaj, who was convicted of a murder committed when he was 15, has been transferred from the children’s prison to the main prison in Sanandaj after recently turning 18.

The 24 groups said: Iran should immediately commute all death sentences against juvenile offenders and cease all such executions.

Some of the 24 international and regional human rights organizations calling on Iran include:

Amnesty International, Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR); Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS); International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH); Stop Child Executions; and World Organisation against Torture (OMCT).