Date: 22 December 2015
Amnesty International has issued an URGENT ACTION to save the life of a teenager in Iran. Hamid Ahmadi, an Iranian juvenile offender now aged 24, has been sentenced to death again.
He had been convicted of the fatal stabbing of a young man during a fight between five boys when he was only 17.
Iranian juvenile offender Hamid Ahmadi, who had been sentenced to death in 2009 for the fatal stabbing of a young man, has been sentenced to death by the Provincial Criminal Court of Gilan Province for a second time.
He received the written verdict on 17 December. He intends to appeal the sentence again.
Hamid Ahmadi was granted a retrial in June 2015 after Branch 35 of the Supreme Court accepted his “application for retrial”, which he filed based on the new juvenile sentencing provisions of the 2013 Islamic Penal Code.
Hamid Ahmadi was first sentenced to death in August 2009 after Branch 11 of the Provincial Criminal Court of Gilan Province convicted him of murder.
The Supreme Court initially overturned the verdict due to doubts about the testimony of several key witnesses in November 2009, but ultimately upheld the verdict in November 2010.
Hamid Ahmadi’s trial was unfair as the court relied on confessions he made at the police station where he did not have access to a lawyer and his family.
He was a minor at the time and therefore he was not likely to have been able to fully understand the potential consequences of his statements before the police.
He also claims that the confessions were obtained under torture and other ill-treatment. No investigations are known to have been conducted into his allegations.
