A 21-year-old man
convicted of raping three boys when he was a teenager
and sentenced to death has been hanged despite a chief
justice's order that the case be reviewed, the man's
lawyer and a New-York based rights group said
Thursday.
Makwan
Moloudzadeh was executed late Tuesday and his family told to
come pick up his body for burial Wednesday, Human
Rights Watch officials said.
''We were
expecting an order for retrial by the Supreme Court,'' Saeed
Eqbali, the lawyer for the sentenced man, told the
Associated Press. ''There would have been no harm in a
retrial and it could have saved a life.''
Authorities
detained Makwan in 2006 on charges he had had sexual
intercourse with three teenagers, all under the legal age of
18, in the Iranian Kurdish town of Paveh, 440 miles
west of Tehran.
The charges
stemmed from complaints raised by the teenagers' families
claiming Makwan had committed the rape eight years ago, when
he was 13 years old.
During the trial
in a court in the nearby city of Kermanshah, Makwan
tried unsuccessfully to revoke his earlier confession to the
crime, which he said was extracted under coercion. His
lawyer said that after the verdict, the plaintiffs
dropped their accusations.
''But the judges
issued verdict only based on their own understanding,''
Eqbali said. ''Under the law, even if Makwan had confessed
four times, it should not have mattered because he was
not of [legal] age at the time of the crime.''
In November the
head of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi
ordered Makwan's death sentence be halted, said the initial
verdict was against the law, and ordered a retrial,
Eqbali said.
But the case,
which was supposed to be reviewed in Tehran, was sent back
to Kermanshah, where local judicial authorities speedily
approved the execution, and it was ''carried out
quickly,'' the lawyer said.
''Makwan was
hanged on Wednesday, and his body was given to his family
for funeral ceremony in Paveh,'' the lawyer added.
Eqbali said the
case was full of ambiguities, including a lack of
investigation and evidence, and said he would sue the judges
on behalf of Makwan's parents if they decide so.
Only this year,
Iran has hanged dozens convicted on charges of rape,
robbery, and kidnapping, which along with sodomy and male
homosexuality, are all capital offenses in the Persian
nation.
The London-based
Amnesty International says Iran has executed five
persons under the age of 18 in 2007, and 27 since 1990.
In Cairo,
Clarissa Bencomo of the Human Rights Watch, said the group
can confirm Makwan's sentence was carried out. ''We
have spoken to individuals who have seen the body and
the burial,'' she said, adding that Makwan's family
was ''very distraught.''
There was no
formal notice, as is required under law, 24 hours before a
sentence is carried out, to a convict's family and lawyer,
she said.
''The local
judicial authorities ordered the execution contravening the
chief justice's order,'' Bencomo said, adding the case was
fraught, with no ''forensic evidence'' of the crime,
only the accusations by the plaintiffs, and scores of
other irregularities.
''We are calling
for a formal investigation both into the contravention
of the judicial order and on authorities to bring to justice
those who carried out the execution,'' Bencomo said.
''There were clearly violations of Iranian law here.''
According to HRW,
Iran is the world's leading executor of children, and
the country has executed people under the age of 18 and
adults who committed a crime when they were under the
legal age -- both of which is prohibited under the
U.N. rights of the child convention, to which Iran is
a signatory. (Nasser Karimi, AP)
