Young man given last minute reprieve from hanging
Adnkronos International - World News
May 6, 2008

Tehran  - An Iranian man who was to be executed on Wednesday for a crime he committed as a minor has been given a last-minute reprieve because of international pressure.

The execution of 20-year-old Behnaud Shojai has been rescheduled for June.

Behnoud was found guilty of murder after allegedly killing another young man in a park in Tehran during a fight three years ago.

However, Iranian authorities have postponed the execution after pressure from the European parliament and international rights groups.

On Monday the European parliament asked Iranian authorities to suspend the execution of Behnoud, while Amnesty International also appealed to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei and president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to commute the sentence.

Behnoud, 17-years-old at the time of the crime, would have been Iran's second execution of an alleged criminal who was underage at the time of the crime.

Last week 80 death sentences were issued by the tribunal in Mashhad, Iran's second largest city, 850 kilometres east of Tehran, said Iran's privately owned news agency Fars.

Eighty-four people have been executed in Iran since 2008, while 317 people were executed in Iran in 2007.

Iran has one of the highest rates of capital punishment in the world.

A report by Amnesty International says that since 1990, Iran has executed at least 28 child offenders, six of them in 2007.

At least 86 child offenders are currently on death row in Iran, although Amnesty International says this number may be higher as at least a further 15 Afghan child offenders have reportedly been sentenced to death recently.

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