Shayan Saeedpour, a juvenile offender was sentenced to death on October 23, by the first branch of Provincial Criminal Court of Kurdistan, headed by judge Vafaian.
Born in 1997, Shayan Saeedpour is convicted of killing a man during a fight on August 16, 2015, while under the age of 18. He has been in jail since.
Evidences suggest that Saeedpur suffered was under the supervision of a psychiatrist before committing the crime.
A source close to Saeedpour family said that Shayan was under the age of 18 and was affected by alcohol drinks at the time of committing the crime. Since then, he has been detained in the Central Prison of Sanandaj. The source emphasized that Shayan Saeedpour has been under psychiatric care and attempted suicide on numerous occasions.
Iran is a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child both of which expressly prohibit the use of the death penalty against anyone convicted of a crime committed when they were under 18.
Yet the authorities have shown no sign of stopping horrific practice of sentencing juvenile offenders to death.
Amnesty International says it has details of 49 people on Iran’s death row who were under 18 at the time of the crime they are alleged to have committed. The UN says there are at least 160 such people facing execution in the country. In fact, there are likely to be many more young offenders on Iranian death rows, as use of capital punishment in Iran is often shrouded in secrecy.
