Iran hangs 17-year old boy, 685th execution this year: ‘Driving age is 18 but…’

Iran executed a 17-year-old convicted of murder, two rights groups said as the country continues to hang people for crimes committed as minors. Hamidreza Azari was executed in prison in the eastern town of Sabzevar in Razavi Khorasan province, the Norway-based Hengaw and Iran Human Rights (IHR) groups said as per news agency AFP.

Hamidreza Azari was the only child in his family and had already started working as a scrap worker. The rights groups said that he was 16 years old at the time of the crime and 17 when executed. Hamidreza Azari had reportedly been sentenced to death for killing a man in a brawl in May this year. The rights groups said that the execution marked another violation by Iran of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The convention defines a child as any person under the age of 18.

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Iran Human Rights said, “Iran is one of the few countries that sentences child-convicts to death and executes more juveniles than all other countries.” As per data issued by the group, at least 68 minors have been executed in Iran since 2010 and at least 684 people have been executed this year in Iran. IHR director Mahmood-Amiry Moghaddam said, "In Iran, if someone wants to get a driver's licence, they must be 18 years old, but 15 years old is enough to be executed."

Iranian media had reported the execution falsely gave his age as 18 in a “deliberate attempt to evade accountability for violating international laws”, the group alleged.

Earlier, Iran also executed a man in his early 20s who was the eighth person to be hanged in a case related to months of nationwide protests that erupted in September 2022.