Zeinab Sekaanvand, Who Committed a Crime as a Teenager, Has Been Executed

One day after Amnesty International warned of the imminent execution of Zeinab Sekaanvand, who had committed a crime as a teenager, on Tuesday, October 2nd, news came that Ms. Sekaanvand had been executed in Urmia.

Philip Luther, director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa section, said in a statement on Monday that “Iranian authorities must immediately stop the execution of Zeinab Sekaanvand”.

However, Zeinab Sekaanvand was executed in a prison in the city of Urmia on Tuesday morning.

This comes as Amnesty International stated in Monday’s statement that “Ms. Sekaanvand was tried in 2014 without a defense lawyer, and her case is based on her confessions, confessions that were obtained without the presence of a defense lawyer”.

Zeinab Sekaanvand married at age 15 and was detained at age 17 “on the charge of murdering her husband”.

Amnesty International had previously stated in a statement that Ms. Sekaanvand claimed that before killing her husband, she had been subjected to months of physical and verbal abuse and harassment by him, and her husband did not agree to divorce.

Amnesty International said that Ms. Sekaanvand confessed to killing her husband at a police station and was subsequently “beaten and tortured” by law enforcement officers for 20 days.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has set the age of criminal punishment at 15 years for boys and 9 years for girls, while international conventions such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child set the age of criminal punishment at 18 years for both genders.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has accepted this convention “conditionally”.

Iran is among a small number of countries where execution sentences for juvenile offenders are issued and carried out after they reach 18 years of age.

International law emphasizes and specifically calls on countries worldwide to refrain from issuing execution sentences for individuals under 18 years of age.

Human rights organizations have repeatedly asked the authorities of the Islamic Republic to stop the execution of criminals below the legal age.

Source: Radio Farda