Iran to hang Afghan youth for crime committed as minor

Iran to hang Afghan youth for crime committed as minorTehran, Iran, Dec. 06 – A young Afghan man is set to be executed on Saturday for a crime he committed as a minor, a semi-official daily reported on Tuesday.

Rostam Tajik, 20 years old, will be hanged in public in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, the hard-line daily Kayhan wrote.

Tajik was sentenced to death for the murder of a woman on May 13, 2001, when he was just 16 years old.

The report said that Tajik had initially fled to the town of Qazvin, west of Tehran, after the incident but was later apprehended.

According to the international human rights organisation Amnesty International, “Iran has executed at least seven juvenile offenders in 2005 including two minors who were under 18 at the time of their execution”.