Iran to execute man arrested as teenager, Amnesty says
Mohammad Hassan Rezaiee, who was arrested at the age of 16, has spent more than a decade on death row.
Amnesty International is urging the Iranian government to call off plans to execute a man for a crime that took place when he was a teenager and whose trial the rights group said was grossly unfair.
The family of Mohammad Hassan Rezaiee was informed on Thursday that his execution would be carried out “in a week” following his transfer to solitary confinement inside Lakan Prison in the northern Iranian city of Rasht.
“The Iranian authorities are yet again waging an abhorrent assault on children’s rights and making an absolute mockery of juvenile justice,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“We call on the Iranian authorities to immediately halt Mohammad Hassan Rezaiee’s execution, quash his conviction and sentence, and grant him a fair retrial conducted in full compliance with the rules of juvenile justice and without resorting to the death penalty,” Eltahawy said in a statement Friday.
