Iran executes 2 minors charged with rape

Iranian authorities secretly executed two 17-year-old boys convicted of multiple rape charges in an unfair trial, according to a statement from Amnesty International.

The two cousins, Mehdi Sohrabifar and Amin Sedaghat, were 15 at the time of their arrest and were unaware of their sentence until they were about to be executed, the rights group said.

“The Iranian authorities have once again proved that they are sickeningly prepared to put children to death, in flagrant disregard of international law,” Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Director, said in a statement.

The teenagers had been held at a youth detention centre for two years before they were transferred to Adelabad in Shiraz on the 24 April. Their families were granted a visit, unaware they were to be killed the next day.

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A forensic institute called the families the next day asking them to collect the two bodies, according to the report.

“It seems they cruelly kept these two boys in the dark about their death sentences for two years, flogged them in the final moments of their lives and then carried out their executions in secret,” said Luther.

Lash marks covered their bodies which Amnesty believes indicates they were punished just before death.

Records show that between 1990 and 2018, Iran executed 97 people who were under 18 at the time of the alleged offence.

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According to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), of which Iran is a signatory, imposing the death penalty on a person aged under 18 is illegal.

Iran halved the number of people executed between 2017 and 2018, after it reformed its mandatory death sentence for drug offences.

Originally, the reforms had hoped to outlaw the penalty for drug offences altogether but instead raised the minimum quantities of drugs needed to warrant execution.

Some 15,000 of those already sentenced had cases put on hold while they were reviewed.