14 October 2015
Reports have emerged of a second execution of a juvenile offender in Iran in just a few days Amnesty International said today, which reveal the full horror of the country’s deeply flawed juvenile justice system.
Fatemeh Salbehi, a 23-year-old woman, was hanged on Oct 13 for a crime she allegedly committed when she was 17, only a few days after another juvenile offender, Samad Zahabi, was hanged for a crime he also allegedly committed at 17.
Fatemeh Salbehi was hanged in Shiraz’s prison in Fars Province despite Iran being bound by an absolute international legal ban on juvenile executions, and severe flaws in her trial and appeal. She had been sentenced to death in May 2010 for the murder of her 30- year- old husband, Hamed Sadeghi, whom she had been forced to marry at the age of 16.
An expert opinion from the State Medicine Organization provided at the trial had found she had had severe depression and suicidal thoughts around the time of her husband’s death. However the death sentence was upheld by Iran’s Supreme Court later that year.
“The use of the death penalty is cruel, and inhumane and degrading in any circumstances, but it is utterly sickening when meted out as a punishment for a crime committed by a person who was under 18 years of age, and after legal proceedings that make a mockery of juvenile justice,” said Said Boumedouha, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.
 
“With these executions the Iranian judiciary has yet again put on display its brazen contempt for the human rights of children, including their right to life. There are simply no words to adequately condemn Iran’s continued use of the death penalty against juvenile offenders.”
In another appalling case eight days ago, another juvenile offender Samad Zahabi was secretly hanged in Kermanshah’s Dizel Abad Prison in Kermanshah province for shooting a fellow shepherd during a row over who should graze their sheep.
This execution was also carried out without a 48 hour notice period being given to Zahabi’s lawyer, as is required by law. Horrifically his family said they only learned of his fate after his mother visited the prison on 5 October 2015.