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Iran: Call off execution of teenage prisoner

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Alireza Tajiki was 15 years old at the time of arrest

The Iranian Resistance calls on international human rights organizations to take urgent action and demand the cancellation of the scheduled execution of Alireza Tajiki who was only 15 years old at the time of arrest.

Repeated appeals by the family of Alireza Tajiki for revision of his case have been rejected by the mullahs’ judiciary. The young prisoner has been in jail since 2012 and is going to be executed on Wednesday, August 3, 2016, in Adelabad Prison of Shiraz.

Despite his age, Alireza Tajiki was denied access to a lawyer throughout the investigation process and was tortured under interrogation to make false confessions, a routine practice in Iranian jails.

In a statement on the pending execution of Alireza Tajiki, Amnesty International wrote: “Imposing the death penalty on someone who was a child at the time of the crime flies in the face of international human rights law… It is particularly horrendous that the Iranian authorities are adamant to proceed with the execution when this case was marked by serious fair trial concerns and primarily relied on torture-tainted evidence… Iran’s bloodstained record of sending juvenile offenders to the gallows, routinely after grossly unfair trials, makes an absolute mockery of juvenile justice and shamelessly betrays the commitments Iran has made to children’s rights.”

Fifty-five executions have been registered between July 11 and 27 in Iran. This is but a small part of the wave of executions taking place throughout the country. Many executions are carried out secretly and their news do not leak out.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
August 1, 2016