Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Ayatollah Sayed ‘Ali Khamenei
The office of the Supreme Leader
Islamic Republic Street – End of Shahid
Keshvar Doust Street
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Email: (via website) http://www.leader.ir/langs/en/index.php?
p=letter
Twitter: @khamenei_ir (English),
@Khamenei_ar (Arabic),
@Khamenei_es (Spanish).
Salutation: Your Excellency
Head of the Judiciary
Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani
c/o Public Relations Office
Number 4, Deadend of 1 Azizi
Above Pasteur Intersection
Vali Asr Street
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Email: info@humanrights-iran.ir
Salutation: Your Excellency
And copies to:
President of the Islamic Republic Iran
Hassan Rouhani
The Presidency
Pasteur Street, Pasteur Square
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Twitter: @HassanRouhani (English),
@Rouhani_ir (Persian)
Iran does not presently have an embassy in the United States. Instead, please send copies to:
Iranian Interests Section
2209 Wisconsin Ave NW, Washington DC 20007
Phone: 202 965 4990 I Fax: 202 965 1073 I Email: info@daftar.org
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URGENT ACTION
JUVENILE OFFENDER RISKS EXECUTION
Milad Azimi was arrested on 11 December 2013. He was not allowed any contact with his family until six days later, when he was taken to the Office of the Prosecutor, where he retracted his “confession” saying he had made it under duress. He was returned to the police station and was apparently subjected to further torture and other ill-treatment. During interrogations, conducted
without a lawyer present, Milad Azimi said at first that another young man had stabbed the man who was killed. He later “confessed” to stabbing the man after an argument over a girl escalated into a fight. He stressed though that “I did so in a state of extreme anger … and under circumstances where I had lost control over myself and did not understand what I was doing.” He added that he had stabbed the man in self-defence, with no intention to kill. At his trial in May 2015, Milad Azimi again retracted his “confession”, saying he had made it under duress.
As a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Iran is obliged to ensure that all legislation defines a child as a person under the age of 18 years. The CRC has determined the age of 18 as the standard age of attaining adult criminal responsibility, without any discrimination between boys and girls. This is a different matter from the minimum age of criminal responsibility, the age below which children may not be arrested and charged with a crime at all. The minimum age of criminal responsibility varies around the world but the Committee on the Rights of the Child has stated that a minimum age of criminal responsibility below the age of 12 years is not acceptable.
The age of adult criminal responsibility in Iran has been set at nine lunar years for girls and 15 lunar years for boys. Above this age, in cases of
hodud (offences against God carrying inalterable punishments prescribed by Shari’a law) and
qesas (retribution-in-kind connected with a criminal act), a child is generally convicted and sentenced in the same way as an adult. However, since the adoption of a revised Penal Code in 2013, judges have been given discretion not to sentence juvenile offenders to death if they determine that the juvenile offenders did not understand the nature of
the crime or its consequences, or their “mental growth and maturity” are in doubt.
Between May 2013 and January 2015, some branches of Iran’s Supreme Court accepted the request of juvenile offenders for retrial based on the revised Penal Code, and sent them back to differently constituted courts of first instance for retrial. Other Supreme Court branches, however, refused to accept that the revised Penal Code provided valid grounds for the Supreme Court to consider a retrial request. This inconsistency in jurisprudence led some lawyers in 2014 to apply to the General Board of the Supreme Court for a “pilot judgement”. The General Board ruled on 2 December 2014 that all those on death row for crimes committed when they were under 18 are entitled to receive a retrial of their cases. These retrials are not, however,
full trials, as they are confined to considering the juvenile offenders “mental growth” at the time of the crime.
In 2015 at least four juvenile offenders are believed to have been executed. They included Javad Saberi, hanged on 15 April, Vazir Amroddin, hanged in June/July, Samad Zahabi, hanged on 5 October, and Fatemeh Salbehi, hanged on 13 October. (See: Iran: Execution of two juvenile offenders in just a few days makes a mockery of Iran’s juvenile justice system, 14 October 2015, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/10/iran-juvenile-offenders-executed/)
Name: Milad Azimi
Gender m/f: m