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WSJ: "European companies are
promising billions in new deals in Iran-€5.7 billion from Italian
steelmaker Danieli and more than €300 million from French car builder PSA
Peugeot Citroën, among others-as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani works
to revive trade and political ties on the Continent this week. Mr.
Rouhani landed in Rome on Monday on his first overseas trip since the
European Union lifted sanctions on Jan. 16 in return for Tehran's
implementation of key restrictions on its nuclear program. The trip will
take Mr. Rouhani from Vatican City-marking the first meeting between an
Iranian president and a pope since 1999-to the gilded halls of Paris's
Élysée Palace. With a number of U.S. sanctions still in place, European
countries are moving quickly to re-establish ties to sell everything from
consumer goods to aircraft. Italian and Iranian companies signed deals
valued at about €17 billion ($18.36 billion) late Monday ahead of a
formal dinner between Mr. Rouhani and Italian Prime Minister Matteo
Renzi. Earlier in the day, Italian steel firm Danieli said it would sign
deals valued at about €5.7 billion during the visit. Other firms signing
agreements on Monday included oil-field services company Saipem SpA,
energy group Ansaldo Energia and ship maker Fincantieri SpA... In France,
auto makers, airport operators and construction firms were primed for a
raft of accords when Mr. Rouhani visits French President François
Hollande on Thursday. French car maker Peugeot is expected to complete an
agreement to manufacture cars in Iran as part of a 50-50 joint venture
with auto maker Iran Khodro valued at more than €300 million, according
to a person familiar with the matter... In opening its doors for
business, however, Tehran is demanding European firms locate
technological know-how and factories inside Iran to revive the country's
hobbled job market. Another key plank of Iran's ambitions is the
revamping of its creaky aviation industry. Iranian officials say they
plan to buy more than 100 new jets from Airbus Group SE to replenish the
country's small and poorly maintained commercial passenger fleet. Mr.
Rouhani's meeting with Mr. Hollande in Paris on Thursday is timed to the
unveiling of about €400 million in contracts to expand Iran's aging
airports for increased tourism and business traffic, one of the people
familiar with the matter said. Tehran is expected to tap French airport
operator Aéroports de Paris and construction-and-media conglomerate
Bouygues SA to design and build a new terminal at Tehran's Imam Khomeini
International Airport, according to the people. French construction firm
Vinci SA will develop and operate airports in Mashhad and another Iranian
city, the people said... Just minutes after Mr. Rouhani landed in Rome,
Italian airline Alitalia SpA said it would boost the number of flights
between Rome and Tehran from four times a week to daily, starting March
27." http://t.uani.com/1QpOjfA
Reuters:
"Four-fifths of candidates for the body that will choose Iran's next
Supreme Leader have withdrawn or been disqualified including a grandson
of Ayatollah Khomeini close to reformist politicians, in a setback to
President Hassan Rouhani. The 12-member Guardian Council, a clerical body
that oversees elections and legislation, approved just 166 of the 801
candidates for the Assembly of Experts, electoral commission spokesman
Siamak Rahpeik was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA on Tuesday.
The disqualifications, a week after thousands of parliamentary candidates
were similarly excluded, are a blow to Rouhani... Back in Tehran,
hardliners who opposed his diplomatic opening are manoeuvring to exclude
his allies from the upcoming elections and check his ambitions to carry
out domestic reforms. Among those excluded was Hassan Khomeini, grandson
of the Islamic Republic's first Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini... Elections to the 88-member Assembly of Experts fall on Feb.
26. The Assembly oversees the activities of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, and will choose his successor if the 76-year-old cleric dies or
becomes incapacitated during its eight-year term. Elections to the
290-seat parliament are being held on the same day. Last week, the
Guardian Council disqualified more than 7,000 of the 12,000 parliamentary
candidates, including almost all reformist candidates and many
moderates... the exclusion of the charismatic Khomeini, with his unique
revolutionary legacy, is a major blow to the moderate movement. With so
few candidates approved, conservatives appear likely to stay firmly in
control of both parliament and the Assembly of Experts. 'The tiny faction
led by Rafsanjani, who once used to lead the assembly, will not be able
to have a big say,' Rassam said. Rafsanjani was ousted as the Assembly's
chairman last year in favor of Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, a
hardliner." http://t.uani.com/1OMKFff
Newsweek: "A little-noticed side
agreement to the Iran nuclear deal has unexpectedly reopened painful
wounds for the families of more than a dozen Americans attacked or held
hostage by Iranian proxies in recent decades. U.S. officials, the
families say, insisted that Tehran would pay for financing or directing
the attacks, but American taxpayers wound up paying instead. The
agreement, which resolved a long-running financial dispute with Iran,
involved the return of $400 million in Iranian funds that the U.S. seized
after the 1979 Islamic revolution, plus another $1.3 billion in interest.
Announced on January 17-the same day the two countries implemented the
nuclear deal and carried out a prisoner swap-President Barack Obama
presented the side agreement as a bargain for the United States, noting
that a claims tribunal in the Hague could have awarded Iran a much larger
judgment. 'For the United States, this settlement saved us billions of
dollars that could have been pursued by Iran,' Obama said. But for the
victims, the side deal is a betrayal, not a bargain. In 2000, the Clinton
administration agreed to pay the $400 million to more than a dozen
Americans who had won judgments against Iran in U.S. courts. At the time,
American officials assured the victims that the Treasury would be
reimbursed from the seized Iranian funds. That same year, Congress passed
a law empowering the president to get the money from Iran. 'We all
believed that Iran would pay our damages, not U.S. taxpayers,' says
Stephen Flatow, a New Jersey real estate lawyer who received $24 million
for the death of his 19-year-old daughter in a 1995 bus bombing in the
Gaza Strip. 'And now, 15 years later, we find out that they never
deducted the money from the account. It makes me nauseous. The Iranians
aren't paying a cent.' Flatow's cohorts agree. They include the families
and survivors of some of the most high-profile foreign attacks against
Americans in recent decades. Among them: five former Beirut hostages whom
the Iran-backed Islamist group Hezbollah held for years during the 1980s;
the wife of U.S. Marine Colonel William Higgins, whom Hezbollah kidnapped
in 1988, before torturing and hanging him; the family of Navy diver
Robert Stethem, whom an Iranian-backed group murdered in Beirut during
the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner; and a family whose daughter was
killed in a Hamas bus bombing in Jerusalem in 1996... the revelation that
Iran never paid the money has hit some of the families hard. They've lost
the feeling that some measure of justice was served. 'I feel like a
schnorrer,' says Flatow, using the Yiddish term for a mooch, because U.S.
taxpayers, not Iran, paid his damages. Other victims say they're bothered
by the administration's reluctance to discuss the details of the side
deal. It's brought back memories from 20 years ago, when the victims won
their judgments against Iran in U.S. courts, only to find themselves
blocked at every turn by the Clinton administration." http://t.uani.com/1UoFweM
U.S.-Iran
Relations
WSJ: "The disappearance of three
U.S. citizens in Iraq is posing a fresh test of the Obama
administration's relationship with Iran, a week after the White House
completed a high-stakes prisoner swap. Some U.S. intelligence officials
and Iraqi police have said in recent days they believe hard-line Iraqi
Shiite militias with close ties to Tehran abducted three American defense
contractors earlier this month in a suburb of Baghdad. U.S. officials said
they are specifically looking at three Iraqi militias for their possible
role in the kidnappings: Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, or the League of the
Righteous, Kata'ib Hezbollah, and the Badr Corps. All of them, the
Pentagon has long believed, receive training, arms and funding from
Iran's elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Secretary of State John Kerry last week raised the issue of the missing
Americans in Iraq with his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, on the
sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, according to
U.S. officials. The suspected kidnappings in Iraq serve as a fresh test
for the White House's efforts to strengthen its ties with Tehran in the
wake of the recent prisoner swap... Mr. Kerry and other Obama administration
officials have said there are no indications Iran played a role in
abducting the Americans. They also haven't ruled out the possibility that
the disappearances resulted from criminal activity common in Baghdad. But
they have said Tehran may be able to use its influence with the Iraqi
militias to gain the Americans' release... Some inside the U.S.
intelligence community take a more skeptical view of Iran's willingness
to play a role in gaining the Americans' freedom... A number of former
U.S. officials who have worked on Iran policy have voiced concerns that
the Obama administration's hopes for improved relations with Tehran
weren't being matched by Iranian actions in the region." http://t.uani.com/1nMXAVH
Reuters: "Saeed Abedini, an American
pastor freed this month from an Iranian prison as part of a U.S.-Iranian
prisoner swap, said in a television interview aired on Monday that he was
tortured and left in solitary confinement for refusing to sign a false
confession and saw other prisoners being taken to be hanged. Abedini told
Fox News that while in Tehran's Evin prison he was beaten by
interrogators, left with an al Qaeda prisoner who tried to kill him and
watched people screaming and crying while taken to be hanged. 'Yes, in
interrogation once they beat me very badly because they wanted me to
write something I didn't do ... Actually it was in a courtroom that the
judge closed the door and the interrogators started beating me, and at
that time I got a stomach bleeding,' he told Fox News. 'The worst thing
that I saw was when they took some Sunnis for execution...Most of them
were Sunnis, some of them were political prisoners.... I can say most
were executed for their faith.'" http://t.uani.com/1nMYkKq
Extremism
Newsweek: "The U.N.'s cultural agency is
to challenge Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday, International
Holocaust Remembrance Day, over the Islamic Republic's plan to host a
cartoon contest for caricatures of the Holocaust. The contest, scheduled
for June and announced last December by the country's Islamic Republic
News Agency (IRNA), will be held at the Tehran International Cartoon
Biennial and offers up a prize of $50,000. Organizers say the contest is
supposed to highlight a perceived double standard surrounding the
publication of caricatures of the prophet Mohammed, the central figure of
Islam, but Israeli officials say it is an example of Iranian
anti-Semitism. Iran has held similar contests twice before. In a set of
letters obtained by Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, Carmel
Shama-Hacohen, the Israeli envoy to UNESCO, wrote to the agency to
complain about the contest and UNESCO chief Irina Bokova replied,
expressing her own opposition. It is now expected that Bokova will raise
the issue with Rouhani when he addresses the agency's staff on Wednesday,
sources have told the Israeli publication." http://t.uani.com/1ZQ96vi
Guardian: "Italian officials keen to spare
the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, any possible offence on his visit
to Rome covered up nude statues at the city's Capitoline Museum, where
Rouhani met Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister. Photographs of
Monday's visit show both men standing near a grand equestrian statue of
Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor. Nude statues in the vicinity were
covered by large white panels... The decision to cover the artwork was
seen as a sign of respect for the Iranian president, according to the
Italian news agency Ansa. In another placatory gesture by Italian
officials, alcohol was not served at an official dinner held in Rouhani's
honour." http://t.uani.com/20qJF5E
Sanctions
Relief
Reuters: "Generating economic growth in
the Middle East is crucial to defeating extremism, Iranian President
Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday, putting forward his country as a regional
trade hub and pillar of stability... Underscoring the growing warmth,
Rouhani said he expected Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to visit
Iran in the coming months to help boost bilateral economic alliances. 'We
are ready to welcome investment, welcome technology and create a new
export market,' Rouhani told a business forum on the second day of his
visit to Rome, saying Iran had ambitions to develop its own economy after
years of curbs and hardship. 'Under the new conditions, we want to export
30 percent of what we produce in Iran,' he said, calling for rapid
investment in 'the most secure and stable country in the region'... 'If
we want to combat extremism in the world, if we want to fight terror, one
of the roads before us is providing growth and jobs. Lack of growth
creates forces for terrorism. Unemployment creates soldiers for
terrorists,' Rouhani said... 'We are not looking at simple reactivation
of our cooperation with Iran, but rather a comprehensive relaunch of a
strategic alliance,' Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni told the
business conference." http://t.uani.com/1WMKzaD
NYT: "For its part, Iran is
promoting an investment law that promises tax breaks to foreign investors
of up to 100 percent, the right to send revenue out of the country and
protection of investments in case laws are changed. Still, some legal
experts point out that the law seems to conflict with the constitution at
some points. Conflicting views among Iran's political factions could also
endanger investments, particularly involving products perceived as
symbols of Western consumption. A newly opened restaurant calling itself
Kentucky Fried Chicken (most likely a knockoff of its American
counterpart) was closed in December by the morality police. One Moscow
investment bank, Renaissance Capital, recently said in a note to
investors that it expected foreign investors to follow an arc similar to
that of investors in Russia in the 1990s - from enthusiasm to
disillusionment - as Iran opens to the world. 'Investors will likely
learn the pitfalls of investing in a country with entrenched vested
interests, from the clergy to the Revolutionary Guard, and surprising
linkages between banks and companies that lead to some investments
turning sour,' the note said." http://t.uani.com/1OJSiD6
WSJ: "As Iranian officials scramble
to reconnect to the global economy, one sector is getting early clearance
for takeoff: its creaky aviation industry. In a raft of early deals and
talks following the lifting of broad economic sanctions against Iran,
officials and aviation executives here have signaled they are targeting
an ambitious revamp of the country's aviation infrastructure. Such a
rebuild would come as Tehran already starts to renew its aging fleet of
commercial jetliners. The moves could help lure more business to Iran as
well as, eventually, tourism." http://t.uani.com/1OVQsNv
Tasnim
(Iran): "A
senior Iranian trade official said three Russian banks have voiced their
readiness to promote banking relations with the Islamic Republic in the
near future in a bid to boost commercial cooperation between Tehran and
Moscow. Speaking to the Tasnim News Agency on Monday, Mina Mehrnoush, the
head of planning at Iran's Organization for Trade Development, said that
during a recent visit to Russia by an Iranian trade delegation, 'good
meetings' were held with three Russian banks, namely Mir Business Bank,
Tempbank and RFC Bank. Mir Business Bank, which is the agent bank of Bank
Melli Iran, agreed to provide good facilities and open proper credit
lines for Iran, she said. The Iranian trade official went on to say that
other issues were also discussed in her meetings with Russian banking
officials, including opening accounts for Iranian companies without
having to make a trip to Russia. Mehrnoush further said that Tempbank
will open a representative office in Iran within a couple of months.
During her 4-day stay in Moscow, the Iranian official also met with
representatives of about fifty Russian import companies." http://t.uani.com/1Sh85f2
Reuters: "British regulators are
considering whether to allow two Iranian banks in London to resume
operations after years of sanctions, two sources familiar with the matter
said. Melli Bank and Persia International Bank will only be able to
operate in the UK once they have met Bank of England criteria for
financial firms, the sources told Reuters on Monday. A nuclear deal with
Iran earlier this month led to the removal of European Union curbs on its
banks. This could bring Iranian banks in Britain, which less than 10
years ago boasted surging profits and growing European ties, out of
isolation... Melli Bank and Persia International have been in talks with
the regulator and the Treasury about restarting operations in Britain for
months and have been placed in the New Bank Start-Up unit, unveiled last
week by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England's
Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) to help new banks enter the market,
the sources said... The UK said in a statement: 'The UK Government fully
supports expanding our trade relationship with Iran and encourages UK
businesses to take advantage of the commercial opportunities that will
arise... However, some sanctions remain in place so UK businesses should
continue to ensure they are compliant with all sanctions regimes.'" http://t.uani.com/23qKaz4
Bloomberg: "A Greek oil-tanker owner was
asked about transporting Iranian crude, a shipment that's only just
become permissible following an easing of sanctions that hit the Persian
Gulf country four years ago. Dynacom Tankers Management Ltd., based in
the Athens suburb of Glyfada, has been approached to haul the Persian
nation's crude, said chartering manager Odysseus Valatsas, declining to
elaborate. Shipbroker reports compiled by Bloomberg show that Litasco SA
and Cia. Espanola de Petroleos SAU both have Iranian cargoes for which
they will need vessels next month for westbound shipment." http://t.uani.com/1TlBmGp
Terrorism
Reuters: "Pope Francis met Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani in the Vatican on Tuesday and urged Tehran to
work with other Middle East states to promote peace and stop the spread
of terrorism and arms trafficking in the region... A Vatican statement
spoke of the 'important role Iran is called on to play, along with other
countries in the region, to promote adequate political solutions to the
problems that afflict the Middle East, combating the spread of terrorism
and arms trafficking'. 'I thank you for your visit and I hope for peace,'
Francis told the Iranian leader at the end of a 40-minute meeting in the
pope's private study in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace. Rouhani, who wore
a white turban and black robe, asked the pope to 'pray for me'. He then
held separate talks with top Vatican diplomats." http://t.uani.com/1nN3SVe
Asharq
Al-Awsat:
"Buenos Aries- Mexican intelligence, in cooperation with Canadian
intelligence services, has recently revealed activities for the Lebanese
Hezbollah under Iranian support being detected in Latin America, at
Venezuela, Mexico, Nicaragua, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, in
addition to the zone between the Paraguay, Argentine, and Brazil border
triad. George Shea, expert in Middle Eastern affairs and lecturer at the
Buenos Aires University, explained that Hezbollah, under Iranian
sponsorship, now plans on further expansion following the Russian
interference in Syria, in addition to the military Iranian presence that
has reduced the need of Hezbollah ground troops in Syria. Authorities in
Mexico had already arrested a Lebanese Hezbollah affiliate, on borders
with the US, who was caught with fake identification papers and drugs.
However, official authorities have yet not disclosed his name for further
investigation on Hezbollah's activities there. The Lebanese detainee has
confessed to being associated with the Iranian Army of the Guardians and
that he was on a mission to collect data on foes of the Iranian
government." http://t.uani.com/1OMNInO
Syria
Conflict
Reuters: "The Syrian opposition cast
doubt on whether it would go to peace talks planned for Friday, throwing
U.N. diplomatic efforts into question as it accused the United States of
adopting unacceptable Iranian and Russian ideas for solving the conflict.
The Saudi-backed opposition was meeting on Tuesday to decide whether to
attend the talks which U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura aims to open in
Geneva on Friday, ushering in months of indirect negotiations between
delegates in separate rooms. Opposition official Asaad al-Zoubi told
Arabic news channel Al-Hadath that he was pessimistic, though the final
decision would be taken at the opposition meeting in Riyadh... The Syrian
government, which is clawing back territory from the rebels with the help
of Russian air strikes and Iranian ground forces, has already said it
will attend. The opposition comprising the recently formed High
Negotiations Committee (HNC) has however repeatedly said the government
and its allies must halt bombardments and lift blockades of besieged
areas before they will go to any talks... Reflecting opposition
misgivings about the process, he told Al-Hadath that U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry had tabled Iranian and Russian ideas about Syria at a
recent meeting with opposition leader Riad Hijab. 'It was not comfortable
for us for America - even in theory or partially - to adopt what came in
the Iranian and Russian initiatives,' Zoubi said in the interview." http://t.uani.com/1KCkUu6
Human
Rights
NYT: "Iran is one of the leading
executioners of juvenile offenders, despite its improved legal
protections for children and a pledge more than two decades ago to end
the death penalty for convicts younger than 18, Amnesty International
said Monday. In a new report, Amnesty International said that it had
documented the execution of at least 73 juveniles in Iran from 2005 to
2015 and that 160 juvenile offenders are languishing on the country's
death row. The report casts doubt on laws meant to improve children's rights
in Iran in the past few years, including new discretion by judges to
impose alternative punishments on juveniles convicted of capital crimes.
In reality, the report said, these changes are attempts by the
authorities to 'whitewash their continuing violations of children's
rights and deflect criticism of their appalling record as one of the
world's last executioners of juvenile offenders.' ... There is little
doubt among rights groups that Iran has executed more people convicted of
capital crimes committed as minors than any other country. 'Iran is
almost certainly the world leader in executing juvenile offenders,'
Michael G. Bochenek, senior counsel of the children's rights division at
Human Rights Watch, said in a post on its website in April. Amnesty
International has released its report as a United Nations committee is
reviewing compliance with the Convention of the Rights of the Child. In
1994, Iran ratified that treaty, which prohibits capital punishment and
life imprisonment without the possibility of release for offenses
committed by people younger than 18." http://t.uani.com/1SIa7X7
ICHRI: "'Why has the Islamic Republic
agreed to the release of Iranian-American prisoners but they won't free
our own prisoners who are the children of Iran?' asked Ahmad Ronaghi
Maleki, whose son, Hossein Ronaghi Maleki, has spent more than six years
in prison for blogging. Speaking to the International Campaign for Human
Rights in Iran, Hossein Ronaghi Maleki's father added that he expects
Iranian officials to show mercy for innocent Iranian prisoners. 'As a
father I want my son to be free, too. All these years I have been running
around shouting for my son's freedom so that someone might hear me.'
Hossein Ronaghi Maleki, now 30, was sentenced to 15 years in prison by
Judge Pirabbasi for blogging comments critical of the results of the 2009
presidential election in Iran. The results of that election were widely
disputed in Iran, and peaceful protests were met with a violent state
crackdown that left hundreds arrested and jailed. Maleki was charged with
'acting against national security' and 'supporting and receiving money
from foreign organizations.' Ahmad Ronaghi Maleki told the Campaign that
his son returned to Evin Prison at the end of his furlough on January 20,
2016, four days before the Iran-U.S. prisoner exchange. He had been
released on June 14, 2015, on 14 billion rials (approximately $464,000)
bail to receive treatment for persistent lung, kidney, and digestive
problems." http://t.uani.com/1QyTITo
IHR: "Two unidentified prisoners
have been hanged by Iranian authorities. According to state run news
agency Khabar Online, a prisoner was hanged at Yasuj's central prison on
Sunday January 24... In another official report by Khabar Online, the
execution of a prisoner in Kermanshah (western Iran) for the alleged
murder of the Friday Prayer Imam of Savojbolagh (a county in the province
of Alborz, northern Iran) was confirmed by the Iranian Judiciary
spokesman Gholamhossein Mohsen Eje'i." http://t.uani.com/1QpFwu8
Opinion
& Analysis
Amnesty
International:
"Scores of youths in Iran are languishing on death row for crimes
committed under the age of 18, said Amnesty International in a new report
published today. The report debunks recent attempts by Iran's authorities
to whitewash their continuing violations of children's rights and deflect
criticism of their appalling record as one of the world's last
executioners of juvenile offenders. 'Growing Up on Death Row: The Death
Penalty and Juvenile Offenders in Iran' reveals that Iran has continued
to consign juvenile offenders to the gallows, while trumpeting as major
advances, piecemeal reforms that fail to abolish the death penalty
against juvenile offenders. 'This report sheds light on Iran's shameful
disregard for the rights of children. Iran is one of the few countries
that continues to execute juvenile offenders in blatant violation of the
absolute legal prohibition on the use of the death penalty against people
under the age of 18 years at the time of the crime,' said Said
Boumedouha, deputy director of Amnesty International's Middle East and
North Africa Program. 'Despite some juvenile justice reforms, Iran
continues to lag behind the rest of the world, maintaining laws that
permit girls as young as nine and boys as young as 15 to be sentenced to
death.' In recent years the Iranian authorities have celebrated changes
to the country's 2013 Islamic Penal Code that allow judges to replace the
death penalty with an alternative punishment based on a discretionary
assessment of juvenile offenders' mental growth and maturity at the time
of the crime. However, these measures are far from a cause for
celebration. In fact, they lay bare Iran's ongoing failure to respect a
pledge that it undertook over two decades ago, when it ratified the
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to abolish the use of death
penalty against juvenile offenders completely. As a state party to the
CRC Iran is legally obliged to treat everyone under the age of 18 as a child
and ensure that they are never subject to the death penalty nor to life
imprisonment without possibility of release. However, Amnesty
International's report lists 73 executions of juvenile offenders which
took place between 2005 and 2015. According to the UN at least 160
juvenile offenders are currently on death row. The true numbers are
likely to be much higher as information about the use of the death
penalty in Iran is often shrouded in secrecy. Amnesty International has
been able to identify the names and location of 49 juvenile offenders at
risk of the death penalty in the report. Many were found to have spent,
on average, about seven years on death row. In a few cases documented by
Amnesty International, the time that juvenile offenders spent on death
row exceeded a decade. 'The report paints a deeply distressing picture of
juvenile offenders languishing on death row, robbed of valuable years of
their lives - often after being sentenced to death following unfair
trials, including those based on forced confessions extracted through
torture and other ill-treatment,' said Boumedouha. In a number of cases
the authorities have scheduled the executions of juvenile offenders and
then postponed them at the last minute, adding to the severe anguish of
being on death row. Such treatment is at the very least cruel, inhuman
and degrading." http://t.uani.com/1ZQ9JFk
UN
Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran Ahmed Shaheed: "On January 12, 2015, the UN Committee
on the Rights of the Child concluded its review of Iran's third and
fourth periodic reports on the implementation of the provisions of the
Convention on the Rights of the Child. For two days UN committee members
reviewed information received and asked questions about a wide variety of
important topics ranging from child marriage to health and educational
opportunities for children, including Afghan refugees. Iran is one of a
handful of countries that still executes child offenders, or boys and
girls under 18 years of age at the time they commit a crime. Iran's
judiciary continues to sentence child offenders to death, and carry out
their execution by hanging, despite the fact that Iran adhered to the
treaty in 1991 and its parliament ratified it three years later. In 2015
human rights groups documented at least three executions of child
offenders, with at least 160 others awaiting the same fate on death row.
During their response, Iranian officials spent a significant portion of
their time asserting that changes in the country's penal and criminal
procedure codes in 2013 and 2015, respectively, and initiatives like the
National Action Plan for Children implemented in 2009, have allowed
judges more discretion in replacing death sentences for child offenders
with other measures. They noted, however, that more scientific studies
conducted by experts and training are required to ensure that lawyers and
judges consider the best interest of the child, acknowledged that change
will not happen overnight, and cited their government's decision to
submit to committee review as proof of Iran's willingness to
constructively engage with UN human rights mechanisms. Notwithstanding
the fact that the number of child offenders executed in 2014-15 are
actually higher than at any time during the past five years, Iran should
recognize that on an issue as important as this, cooperation and
piecemeal reform are not enough. Though Iranian officials may quibble
with the numbers cited by rights groups, they simply cannot sidestep the
fact that Iran's laws, as written, allow for the execution of child
offenders. The bottom line is that today Iranian judges can, and have,
sentenced girls as young as nine lunar years and boys as young as 15 lunar
years to death by hanging, in plain violation one of the most fundamental
and sacrosanct rights recognized under international law. This is why I
join the members of the committee in calling on the government of Iran to
take more drastic and immediate measures to ensure that from this day on
no child offenders are executed in Iran, regardless of the nature of
their crime." http://t.uani.com/1OVEljo
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Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against
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