Iran executes 2nd prisoner who escaped Saqqez jail during COVID-19 riot
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iranian authorities have executed a second Kurdish prisoner who had escaped from a jail in the west of the country alongside dozens of other inmates.
Jails across the country saw deadly riots in recent weeks among inmates fearful of contracting the coronavirus inside Iran’s overcrowded prisons.
Shayan Saeedpour was among 74 inmates who escaped Saqqez prison in Iran’s Kurdistan province on March 27 after clashing with the guards.
Most of the prisoners were re-arrested in the days after the mass escape, including Saeedpour. Nine others are still at large, according to the officials.
Saeedpour was executed at Saqqez prison in the early hours of Tuesday morning, one of his relatives told Hengaw, a Kurdish human rights organization.
Mostafa Salimi, another escapee, was executed on April 11.
In October 2018, Saeedpour was sentenced to death for first degree murder and to 80 lashes for drinking alcohol. He reportedly killed a man named Soleiman Azadi during a quarrel in August 2015 when he was aged 17.
On Sunday, Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported that seven prisoners, including Saeedpour, had been moved into solitary condiment – a sign they would face imminent execution.
“Today we managed to visit Shayan in prison, he has been taken to a solitary confinement and they have said that they are going to execute his sentence,” Saeedpour’s father Salah told Kurdistan Human Rights Network on Monday.
Hundreds of people gathered outside Azadi’s family home just hours before the execution to appeal for Saeedpour to be pardoned.
“I know that they have lost their son too and they are still mourning. I myself handed in my son and I know he is guilty but we need to bear in mind that he was 17 when he committed the crime,” Saeedpour’s father told the network.
Rudaw understands Azadi’s mother agreed to pardon Saeedpour but the father maintained he would make his decision at the time of the execution.
When the Azadi family went to the prison at 4am on Tuesday morning, officials did not allow them or their lawyer to enter. The execution went ahead unchallenged.
Dozens of prisoners on death row in Iran have been pardoned by the families of the victims in recent years following appeals by anti-death penalty campaigners and the general public.
Although Iran ratified the Convention on the Rights of Child in 1994, it has reserved the right to apply the Islamic penal code when the convention becomes incompatible with domestic laws.
Iran continues to execute dozens of juvenile offenders in flagrant violation of international law, according to Amnesty International.
Iran executed 251 people in 2019 (38 percent of all recorded executions globally), at least four of them under the age of 18 when they committed the crime, according Amnesty’s most recent data.
“Iran continued to use the death penalty against people under the age of 18 at the time of the crime, contrary to international law which strictly prohibits the use of the death penalty in such cases,” Amnesty said.