Iran’s High Council for Human Rights says executing child offenders is not a human rights violation By Christine Douglass-Williams

Majid Tafreshi of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights

Jihad Watch : Majid Tafreshi of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights insists that “Iran’s use of the death penalty for crimes committed as minors does not mean it violates human rights.”

He admitted that Iran executes children “three to four times” a year, but says that since they’re in their late teens, this represents no abuse of human rights.

Tafreshi dismissed the accusations of human rights abuses as propaganda and tried to deflect attention to the U.S., saying that American sanctions on Iran are “barbaric.” Of course, he made no mention of the repeated threats that Iran has made against Israel, or to its adventurism in the region and globally via its proxies.

“Iran says executing child offenders not a rights violation,” AFP, July 1, 2021:

TEHRAN — Iran’s use of the death penalty for crimes committed as minors does not mean it violates human rights, a senior Iranian official has insisted to AFP in response to UN criticism. The Islamic republic executes convicts for crimes they committed while under-age “three to four times” a year, argued Majid Tafreshi of the state-run High Council for Human Rights.

Such uses of capital punishment are “not a symbol of violations of human rights,” he said in an interview with AFP, charging that criticism of the practice was “not fair”. “When we are talking about under-18s, we are not talking about six or five years old. We are talking about mainly our 17 years old big boys (where) the court recognised their maturity.”

The United Nations and human rights groups frequently criticise Iran for executing child offenders, which violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that Tehran has ratified. UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet last week pointed to Iran’s “widespread use of the death penalty” and said that “over 80 child offenders are on death row, with at least four at risk of imminent execution”.

Tafreshi, the council’s deputy head of international affairs, rejected international criticism. He said the council’s broad goal “is minimising the number of executions… as much as possible”, calling it an effort for which “nobody applauds Iran”. Iran last year executed at least four people found guilty of murders committed when they were minors, according to the UN….

Tafreshi dismissed as “propaganda” charges by the UN, foreign governments and rights groups that many Iranian detainees are tortured and denied fair trials, adding that any suspected such cases are investigated.

He also pointed to what he labelled Western countries’ own human rights violations, including the United States’ “barbaric sanctions” on Iran, and British and French arms sales to Arab monarchies of the Gulf region.