October 14, 2009

Source Referral: Freedom Messenger
Original Source: Human Rights Activists in Iran
Translated by: Persian2English

Following the execution of Behnood Shojaei, three more teenagers, who committed murder when they were under 18, face execution. Safar Angooti will face the gallows on the 21st of October, and Mohammad Reza Haddadi and Amir Amrelahi, judging from what we have heard, will be executed the following week.

A lot has been done to get the reconciliation of the families of the victims, but up until now, all efforts have proven to be unsuccessful. In addition to the three mentioned teens, Behman Salimian in Esfahan, Abbas Hosseini in Mashhad, Rahim Ahmadi and Mohammad Jahedi in Shiraz, are amongst the teenagers whose lives may be executed at any moment.

Some of the families of the victims have agreed to reconcile in return for blood money, but the families of the convicted are not in the position to pay the blood money. Some organizations have taken advantage of this situation, and my name in particular, to raise funds to cover the blood money. If it is confirmed that blood money will be needed, it will be announced on this weblog. Other than that, any funds collected is unlawful. In order to help these kids by donations, please contact me directly.

Safar Angooti

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Safar Angooti describes the tragedy that had happened by accident:

It was between 7:30 and 8:00 at night when my friends Mohammad, Mostafa, Sirus, Esmaiel, and I were walking on Talaghani street. We walked around for a few minutes. Then one of my friends suggested that we take the route from Golestan street. As we got to the end of the street, there were a few people standing there. One was the victim who was talking to Fatemeh (the girl that I liked), and the other was one of the victim’s friends named Mojtaba. As soon as Fatemeh saw me, she decided to hide, and then soon left the place. Mehdi approached me and asked what I wanted. I said I had just come to see what’s up. He then asked me to get on the back of his bike. He said he was going to take me somewhere. I got on the bike. He drove away a short distance then stopped. It seemed like he was drunk. He said that I was rude, and then he insulted me by saying other inappropriate things. We got in a fist fight, but my friends came and separated us. I was really scared at that point. I went to my house so nothing happens to me. I picked up a handmade knife and secured it around my waist. I came out of the house and went toward my friend’s house. I was on the way when I heard a bike approaching me. I turned around and saw that the victim was coming toward me. Since I was scared, I took out the knife. Without having the intention of hurting him, I told him to stop so that I could see what his problem was. He didn’t stop and kept on coming at me. I extended my hand toward him. I don’t understand what happened then. I didn’t even think the knife had hit him but with my bad luck, the knife hit his shirt collar. He then lost his balance and fell and hit a truck that was nearby. The end of the knife hit the body of the truck and then hit the victim in the neck. I didn’t know what to do so I left the scene and just ran. I got to a place and was there until 12:00 at night. Then I went to Fatehmeh’s house and told her father that because of his daughter, I had stabbed someone. He told me to run away. I went to Saderat Bank street and saw some of my friends. I got some money from them and went to the shrine of Masooma in Qum. I was feeling really guilty. After meditating and praying, I decided to turn myself in. I came to my house and went to the police station with my father and turned myself in.

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At 9:00 pm on March, 25, 2007, a 911 call reports a fight taking place on Behesh Nazad Abad street in Karaj, describing a man by the name of Mehdi Rezaie who has been injured in the neck. Safar Angooti, after a day of guilt, confessed he used a knife in his fight with Mehdi, and as a result, the knife ended up hitting the victim in the neck.

Safar Angooti says that his motivation for the killing was his love for Fatemeh. On the day of the fight, the only reason he had gotten in the fight with the victim was because he had been talking to Fatemeh who was only 14 years old and Safar had seen her a few times in his neighborhood.

Unfortunately a childish argument changed the destiny of these two teens in a way that one dies and the other is in prison now. Judges at branch 71 of Tehran’s Providential Court are Norrollah Aziz Mohammadi, Hosseini, Moradi, Soleimani, and Salari. Without paying attention to Safar’s motives and his age, they declared that the cause of Mehdi’s death was hitting the tuck, and instead of convicting Safar of second-degree murder, they gave him the death penalty. The sentence is then sent to branch 11 of the attorney general. The judges in this branch, Ahmad Saheb Alzamani and Ezzatollah Majdi Nasab, in three sentences confirm the death penalty. Safar Angooti is scheduled to die, like Behnood Shojaie on the 21st of October at 4:00 am in Evin prison.

Safar Angooti was born into an extremely poor family who has a brother and sister, and is now living in Karaj’s Rajaie Shahr prison. His hope is that either the judicial system or Mehdi’s family will save his life. He has gone to the gallows twice, and each time, the execution has been halted.

Mohammad Reza Haddai

Mohammad Reza Haddai was born on January 10th, 1988 and at the time of his arrest, he was only 15 years old.

Mohammad Reza’s father, after going to Shiraz’s courts, found out that Mohammad’s execution order had been sent to the prison’s management. The last time they had told him his son would b executed in the backyard of the Adel Abad prison. As Mohammad Reza’s legal representative, I have not yet been contacted and informed about the time of day or the execution. In a previous case of mine, prisoner Bahaman Zareh  got executed without my knowledge.

On August 14, 2003, Mr. Hossein Rahmat informs the police that his father Mohammad Bagher had left Kazerun for Shiraz on August 12, and has not been seen ever since.  A week later, it is reported that Mohammad Bagher’s vehicle is found in the Fath Abad village in Kazeroon. Police investigation leads to the arrest of a man named Mehdi Sasani who confesses that he took part in stealing the vehicle and killing the driver with the help of Mohammad Ghorbani, Taghi, and Karim.
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On October 2nd, Karim Haddadi got arrested and stated the following:

Mehdi Sasani, Taghi Haddadi, Mohammad and I were standing in front of Emam Zade Seid Hossien around 11 or 12 at night. An orange Peykan stopped after we signaled, and we all got in and passed Ghaeme on the way to Shiraz. Mohammad said to the driver that we have a friend that needed to be picked up. The driver accepted. He later stopped the car to use the bathroom and we got out. As the driver was putting water inside the radiator, Taghi picked up a rock and hit the driver from behind and the driver fell on the ground. Then we all came and hit driver on his face and on his chest and put his body in the back of his trunk and drove to get to Hakim Bashi and Roushan Abad. On the way there, we noticed that the driver was still alive and he was making noise. Taghi, who is my cousin, was behind the wheel. From Roushan Abad we went toward Koreh Kachi gravel road. Taghi stopped the car and opened the trunk. The man was still alive. Mehdi Sasani hit him with a stick, then Mohammad and Taghi put something around the man’s neck and suffocated him. Then Taghi suggested we burn him. So we found some benzine, burned the man and put him in a hole in the ground and covered it up and left.

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The autopsy did not find the exact cause of the death, but it’s announced that a fractured skull could be one cause of death. Upon investigation, Mohammad Reza Haddadi who was 15 at the time, confessed in the early sessions of the court that he was the one who suffocated the victim. A few days later, Mohammad’s mother visited him. Mohammad Reza asked her if she had been given any money. She said no. It is then that he realized that he had been fooled by others. In a letter to the court, he claims that the other participants who were much older and more mature than Mohammad Reza, gave him promises of money and other things, even though he had nothing to do with the murder.

In the end, the court, without investigating Mohammad Reza’s claims and solely based on his original confession that he later retreated, the court charged him with murder and sentenced him to death. He also received other sentences like 15 years for kidnapping and one year for hiding a body. The other participants all received lengthy prison terms for kidnapping and hiding a body.

After the sentencing, when Mohammad Reza realized he has been unfairly treated, and after finding new evidence that included confessions from his other friends, he wrote an appeal about the death sentence, but his appeal was rejected. Even though, in order to value a human’s life, it would have been appropriate to do a thorough investigation of the circumstances. Mohammad Reza has repeatedly said that the other guys fooled him by saying that if he took responsibility for the killing, his family would receive a lump sum amount of money. One of the guys even promised that he would convince Mohammad Reza’s cousin to marry him, because he had been in love with her. Since his family were under heavy financial stresses, and due to his own immaturity, he fell for his friends’ empty promises.

This teenager dies a thousands times a day and sees the nightmare of death, even though he is innocent

Amir Amrollahi

Amir Amrollahi was born on November 30th of 1990 and was only 16 when he was arrested.

On December 14th of 2005, around 11:30, Amir and a couple of his friends named Hassan Mohammadi and Ali Salmani were standing in front of a bakery on Azadegan Street in Shiraz when they unexpectedly saw the victim Mohsen Kazemi and his friend Javad Vaziri. Amir’s friend stares at the victim and his friends, which causes a fight to break out. Amir intervened to stop the fight and used Ali Salmani’s knife as a way to scare off the victim and his friend. Allegedly, the victim started beating Amir, who is much younger than him. Amir showed them the knife in an attempt to scare them off. But the victim persisted. Amir took the knife and gently rubbed its handle against the face of the victim, but the victim would not stop hitting Amir in the face. It was then that Amir extended the knife toward the victim as he was preparing to hit Amir again. The knife then hit the victim on the right side of the chest.

Amir ran away out of fear. On that same day, he told his father the story and his father brought him to the police. Amir never thought that four of the five judges in Far Provincial’s court would give him the death penalty without any consideration of his mental and psychological state at the time of the crime. The verdict is soon confirmed by Shiraz’s attorney general. Amir’s father quickly learned after going into the courts that his son’s execution will be carried out within the next few days.

There are many elements of Amir’s file that should prevent the death penalty sentence:

1. Amir was only 16 at the time of the crime and therefore was not strong enough mentally to control himself under such circumstances. It would have been appropriate to have him evaluated to figure out if he would be considered mature at the time of the crime. Because nowhere in the Islamic punishment laws has it been clarified what the age is for when one would be charged as an adult and would then take responsibility for his crimes.

2. Amir’s financial situation. His family was not able to afford an experienced lawyer so they went with one that was old and sick and as a result, was not able to defend the questionable facts in the case. Amir also has a psychological condition that makes him lose his control from time to time and do things that totally out of his control. Therefore it was necessary to have him evaluated by psychiatrist. Moreover because Amir spent some time in the juvenile detention center had psychological disorders that required him to take medication which is a documented fact but this important factor was also overlooked. Therefore because of these reasons, the verdict is wrong and would be unfair and a violation of Amir’s rights. Even though Amir is extremely remorseful for what happened, but he never meant to kill anyone and his actions were out of his control.

3. As it is evident from the witness testimonies, when the victim fell on the ground, no one came to help him or bring him to a hospital. 30 minutes later, an ambulance arrived and took him to the emergency room, but by this time, he had already died.

Another point that is very important in this case is that the victim should have been rushed to the hospital immediately, but it was delayed, which contributed to the death. The hospital also had very limited resources. The victim had a great chance of survival, and therefore, the investigator must have paid close attention to determine what the actual cause of the victim’s death was. If it turned out that the cause of the death was severe bleeding (because of the delay in providing medical attention to the victim) then the verdict of premeditated first degree murder is against the law.

4. Section B 206 of the Islamic law (the constitution) declares that anyone who intentionally and knowingly commits an act that results in the death of someone else, has committed first degree murder. According to details of Amir’s case, he never had an intention to commit murder, because if he did, then he would have stabbed the victim in the heart. The incident happened accidently and it has imprisoned Amir and saddened his family members.

An extremely important issue that has been neglected by all the judges in each of the cases is that in 1993, the Convention on the Rights of the Child was introduced in the Islamic parliament and a great majority of the MPs signed it. Section 37 of this document declares :

All signing member countries will guarantee that ‘the death penalty or life imprisonment without the chance of parol must not be implemented in crimes that have been committed by individuals that are under the age 18.’ Therefore, the execution of these teenagers is directly a violation of the law.