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RFL/RE – A man arrested for murder when he was 17 is set to be executed in Iran on October 16 despite efforts by human rights groups to persuade Tehran not to carry out the execution.
The execution of Arman Abdolali was postponed earlier this week, but Amnesty International said at the time that he remained in “imminent danger of execution.”
#Breaking – #ArmanAbdolali‘s execution is now postponed to Saturday, 16 Oct. He remains at risk of imminent execution in Iran; he was just 17 when arrested. #Iran – you are breaking intern’l law by sentencing children to death. RT for @Khamenei_fa to stop the Arman’s execution. pic.twitter.com/72gvkMm8r0— Amnesty Iran (@AmnestyIran) October 13, 2021
The London-based rights group has urged Iranian authorities to stop the execution. United Nations human rights experts have also called on Iran to halt Abdolali’s execution and annul his death sentence.
Abdolali was moved to solitary confinement in a prison in Karaj, west of Tehran, in preparation for his execution on October 13 before the postponement.
Abdolali, now 25, was sentenced to death for murdering his girlfriend, who disappeared in 2014. She has never been found.
Iran Human Rights (IHR) said Abdolali confessed to the murder at the time of his arrest but later withdrew the confession.
Amnesty International has called his trial “grossly unfair” by a court that “relied on torture-tainted ‘confessions.'”
Rights groups say Iran has signed international conventions prohibiting the execution of minors.
IHR, which monitors the use of the death penalty in Iran, said at least 64 juvenile offenders have been executed in Iran over the past 10 years.
In a sign of the international concern over the case, Germany’s human rights commissioner, Baerbel Kofler, said carrying out the execution would be an “unacceptable breach of international law.”
“Arman Abdolali was a minor at the time of the alleged crime. There is credible evidence that his confession was obtained under torture and that the conviction thus contradicts fundamental principles of the rule of law,” she said in a statement released by the German Foreign Ministry.
