Amnesty International has uncovered that Iranian authorities secretly executed a young guy who was a minor at the time of his detention and had spent nearly a decade on death row. On the morning of August 2, Sajad Sanjari was hanged in Dizelabad jail in Kermanshah province, but his family was not informed until a prison official asked them to pick up his body later that day.
Sajad Sanjari, who was 15 at the time, was arrested in August 2010 for fatally stabbing a man. Sajad Sanjari claimed the man tried to rape him and acted in self-defense, but he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in 2012.
In January 2012, Sajad Sanjari was convicted and sentenced to death. He admitted stabbing the deceased during his trial, but claimed he did it in self-defense after the man attempted to rape him. He claimed the man had threatened to assault him the day before, so he was armed with a kitchen knife to frighten him away.
After multiple witnesses confirmed to the deceased’s good character, the trial court dismissed Sajad Sanjari’s self-defense claims. The court further said that Sajad Sanjari couldn’t claim self-defense because he was told ahead of time and thus had plenty of opportunity to contact the authorities or seek assistance from his town’s residents.
The Supreme Court first overturned the verdict and death sentence in December 2012, citing multiple errors in the investigation process, but it was eventually upheld in February 2014.
The sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court, and a second appeal for a new trial was denied. Following widespread international outcry, the Iranian authorities postponed Sajad Sanjari’s intended execution in January 2017.
The fact that Sajad Sanjari was executed in secret, denying him and his family even the opportunity to say goodbye, confirms an alarming pattern of Iranian authorities carrying out executions in secret or with little notice in order to reduce the chances of public and private interventions to save people’s lives.
Washington Center For Human Rights urges the Iranian authorities to quickly reform the penal code to prohibit the use of the death sentence against anybody under the age of 18 at the time of the crime, and to put an end to these heinous abuses of the right to life and the rights of children.