Killing Children in Iran

When he was only 14 years old, Fardin Jafarian, an accomplished young athlete who had been awarded medals in taekwondo, killed someone. One of his relatives told the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) that Jafarian had accidentally murdered his friend  “due to carelessness". He was jailed in 2010.

On October 19, 2014, the announcement came: the parents of the victim refused to forgive Jafarian and spare his life. He was executed on October 20.

Fardin Jafarian is not the only Iranian juvenile whose life has been ended with such cruelty. According to the latest report by Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, between January and June 2014, eight people under the age of 18 were executed in Iran.

For human rights activists, the execution of children in Iran is an ongoing challenge. Since 2005, at least 50 individuals under the age of 18 have been executed, and 100 more are on death row. The Iranian regime uses a sleight of hand to deny that it executes juveniles. If someone under the age of 18 is sentenced to death, the verdict is not carried out until the individual turns 18.

This is of course not unusual in some Middle Eastern and Islamic countries. Saudi Arabia regularly executes criminals, regardless of age. In 2010 the United Arab Emirates executed at least two people who were 17 when they committed their crimes.

Most children condemned to death in Iran have not committed murder with intent. The victims are often juveniles of the same age killed in unplanned brawls that simply got out of hand. Iran follows the sharia law of “retribution” or qisas, if the homicide is “private” — meaning that the interests of the state are not violated. In these cases, it is up to the victim’s family to seek retribution by death or to spare the life of the offender.

The main challenge in Iran is the need to enforce the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Islamic Republic of Iran signed the convention in 1991 and Iranian parliament ratified it in 1994. But the Islamic Republic added a reservation: "If the text of the Convention is or becomes incompatible with the domestic laws and Islamic standards at any time or in any case, the Government of the Islamic Republic shall not abide by it."

“Reform” before Execution

All countries in the Middle East have ratified the convention, but most disregard its age provisions. In Iran, the age of puberty for girls is nine lunar years; for boys it is 15 lunar years. (Each lunar year is 11 or 12 days shorter than a solar year.) The Iranian Judiciary keeps juveniles condemned to death in the “reform and education centers” of prisons until they are 18, and then, once they reach 18 years old, executes them immediately.

In puritan Islamic and Arab countries, the situation is even worse. In Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Qatar, the age distinction is mostly subjective and to a large degree left to the court. For example, in Saudi Arabia, the judge decides whether the accused has reached puberty or not based on physical features at the time of trial, not when the crime was committed.

The next major challenge to abolishing juvenile execution in Iran is the country’s closed political environment. Opponents do not get a chance to publicly voice their opinions and arguments. Before execution is abolished, the complexities of the issue and its pros and cons must be presented to society. But because of political pressures and the belief that retribution is a sacred law, human and children’s rights activists do not get the opportunity to do this in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Iranian regime not only stands against structural changes around the law, but also often prevents individuals from taking steps to obtain the forgiveness of the victim’s family. “Based on text in the Koran, the Islamic Republic Judiciary considers retribution to be a private right,” Bahram Rahimi, an Iranian children’s rights activist told IranWire. “But whenever a part of civil society or well-known figures try to get the consent of the plaintiff, the regime pulls levers, though indirectly, to prevent them from doing so.”

One example is the case of Behnoud Shojaee, executed in 2009 at the age of 21 after being convicted for murder and condemned to death when he was 17. Before his execution, rights activists and prominent  public figures appealed to the victim’s family to forgive Shojaee. Three of them — artists Ezzatolah Entezami, Parviz Parastui and Kiumars Pourahmad — were summoned to the prosecutor’s office and  intimidated and subjected to extensive questioning.

Fear of Cultural Change

Perhaps one reason for the regime’s opposition to efforts from civil society, particularly their attempts  to obtain the forgiveness of the victims’ families, is that they do not want such an approach to become a cultural norm. The more the victims’ families forgive juveniles who have committed homicide, the more it becomes part of the culture, disrupting “traditional” beliefs.

In a few cases, efforts have been successful. In one case, the mother of a victim did not forgive a youth known as Balal, but then, at the last moment, she removed the noose from around his neck. But the regime does not allow rights activists to make a case to the public, or to ask the Judiciary to put the question to popular vote. “They probably know that most people will not agree with the idea of executing a young person who, in many cases, has grown up in adverse social and economic conditions and often has no choice when it comes to getting into fights,” says Rahimi.

In more traditional sections of society, people look down on a family who accepts the “diyeh” or monetary compensation on offer and forgives the offender. The families are often wary of looking as if they have agreed to a financial transaction with regard to their loved one’s life. “Families who agree to let the killer go free a face psychological pressure from people around them and from tradition itself,” adds Rahimi.

There are many families who forgo retribution if they are compensated financially, regardless of whether the offender is a juvenile or not. But in the case of under-18s who are guilty of homicide, the families are often unable to pay. In these cases, the regime does not extend a helping hand, keeping the children in prison, or in so-called “reform and education” centers for years.

“The regime treats children who have committed homicide like it treats street children. It gives them no support,” says Rahimi. “When the regime is asked to provide a good life and a good education for children, it replies that the child is the responsibility of the family. And when it comes to ideological indoctrination, it hands over the schools to religious seminaries.”

As yet, there has not been any substantive research into what influences the families that agree to spare the life of juvenile offenders.

No Legal Distinction

In American states where capital punishment still exists, the distinction between murder with intent and manslaughter, voluntary or involuntary, is clear. But this distinction does not exist in Iran. Many children are executed for what would be considered manslaughter in those states. In a more humane judiciary system, “murder” is applied to cases where the offender has committed a premeditated act. This condition rarely — if ever — applies to juveniles. Children do not plan to murder anybody and generally have no clear idea what death means. But the Iranian Judiciary, which acts according to Sharia law in these sorts of cases, does not provide such distinctions.

On the other hand, confession plays a crucial role in Iran’s penal code. If the gathering of evidence was prioritized in the same way, police would have a more difficult task and would not be able to close the case by simply extracting a confession. This issue becomes absolutely vital in the case of children accused of crimes. It is easier to trick a child into confession. Also, the child might confess easily under pressure and under intimidating physical and mental conditions. This is what happened to Delara Darabi, who initially confessed to killing a relative in 2003 when she was 17. But afterwards, she withdrew her first confession, repeatedly. Although the evidence supported her claim, she was convicted on evidence gleaned from her first confession. She was convicted after five years in prison at the age of 23.

In his 2004 movie, “Beautiful City” the Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi depicts a young man who, on the very day that he turns 18, is transferred from a “reform and education” center to death row to wait for his execution, after suffering years of mental torture and anguish. He was a teenager who has grown up in poverty, in a climate of violence and insecurity and killed someone by accident. The life story of Fardin Jafarian, who died in October, may not have been exactly the same, but he came to the same end, as have many anonymous victims in Iran, victims of a social and judicial system that kills.

Read Iran's Death-Row for Children on IranWire.