Amnesty International protests the execution of Shayan Saeedpour
Amnesty International has described the execution of Shayan Saeedpour as prohibited under international law and as a sign of the Islamic Republic's vindictiveness.
Amnesty International has released a statement describing the execution of Shayan Saeedpour as further evidence of the Iranian authorities' complete disregard for the right to life, as Saeedpour "was sent to the firing squad for a crime he committed as a child."
Shayan Saeedpour was executed on Tuesday morning, May 2, at Saqqez Central Prison in Kurdistan Province. Saeedpour was arrested in August 2015, when he was under 18 years old, on charges of premeditated murder during a fight and sentenced to death. The Supreme Court upheld the sentence in 2016.
Diana El-Tahavi, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, described the death penalty against Saeedpour, who was a child with a long history of mental illness and problems at the time of the crime, as prohibited under international law. She said that with this execution, which violates international law, “the Iranian authorities have once again made a mockery of the juvenile justice system.”
In its annual report on the use of the death penalty worldwide, Amnesty International called Iran one of the few remaining countries in the world that still uses the death penalty against juveniles.
Shayan Saeedpour was one of dozens of prisoners who escaped from Saqqez Central Prison in early April this year during a riot and protest against the authorities' disregard for prisoners' concerns about the spread of the coronavirus in Iranian prisons. He was recaptured and detained a few days later.
Amnesty International has raised the possibility that Saeedpour's execution was "a retaliatory measure by local prosecutorial authorities to deter other prisoners from attempting similar escapes."
Amnesty International's annual report on the death penalty around the world, released on Tuesday, emphasized that despite a decline in the number of executions worldwide, Iran remains the world's second-largest executioner after China.
According to Amnesty International, the organization has collected information based on which, “the Saqqez prosecutor had repeatedly pressed for the execution of the death sentence in recent days and had even asked the victim’s family not to pardon Shayan Saeedpour. Under Iranian law, the victim’s family has the right to pardon the killer in exchange for receiving blood money.”
Source: DW
