Major human rights groups appealed to Iran today to stop imposing the death penalty for crimes by juveniles and to commute sentences against nearly 140 youths known to be on death row.
Saying that such executions violated international law ratified by the Islamic Republic, they urged Iranian judicial authorities to spare four young men facing imminent execution for murders committed under the age of 18.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Swiss-based Terre des Hommes were among 24 groups issuing a call they said was backed by Iran's Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.
"It is an emergency ... 138 child offenders are on death row in Iran," Drewery Dyke, an Iran researcher for Amnesty International, told a news briefing where it issued a detailed list of Iranian youths on death row including five girls.
"We fear the true figure could be considerably higher."
Iran has executed at least 30 juvenile criminals since 1990, including seven in 2007, according to the groups which say Saudi Arabia and Yemen are the only two other countries to do so.
Mohammad Hassanzadeh, a 16-year-old Iranian Kurd, was hanged on June 10th for murdering a boy when he was 14, they said.
"We can speak of serial executions," said Bernard Boeton of Terre des Hommes. "Minors have a limited capacity to understand, to express and defend themselves. Whatever the crime, they deserve an alternative sanction than to be hanged in public."
The use of the death penalty against people who committed their offences while under the age of 18 is a "gross violation of customary international law, no matter what age the person has reached at the time of their execution," the groups said.
Four juvenile offenders in Iran are at risk of execution between July 11th and 25th, they said.
They include Behnoud Shojai and Mohammad Fadai, who were given a month-long reprieve on June 11th, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency. The European Union had urged Tehran to spare Shojai's life.
The delay was to allow time for Shojai's family to negotiate financial compensation with the family of the boy he was convicted of stabbing to death, in exchange for a pardon, according to Amnesty International.
The human rights groups named the other two facing imminent execution as Salah Taseb and Sa'eed Jazee.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour last month called on Iran to stay the execution of the four, reminding Iran it had ratified international laws prohibiting imposing the death penalty for juvenile offenders.
Murder, adultery, rape, armed robbery, apostasy and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Iran's sharia law, practised since the 1979 Islamic revolution.