Imminent Execution of Mohammad Kalhari, Teenager Accused of Murder

The lawyer of Mohammad Kalhari, a teenager who committed murder at the age of 15, announced that his client was transferred from a juvenile rehabilitation center to prison last week after turning 18, and due to the finality of the sentence, he could be executed "at any moment." Hassan Aghakhani, in an interview with the Iran Human Rights Campaign website, stated that Mohammad Kalhari was moved from the central juvenile rehabilitation center in Lorestan to the central prison in Borujerd on Thursday, March 4. He also reported that Kalhari's case has been sent to the execution branch and said that "the execution could happen at any moment." According to this lawyer, the Supreme Court has rejected the request for retrial in this case twice and has not yet responded to the third request for retrial. Mohammad Kalhari killed Mohsen Khoshkhashi, a physics teacher at Hafizieh High School in Borujerd, with a knife in class on Saturday, November 22, 2014. Reports indicate that Kalhari was initially sentenced to three years in prison and payment of blood money on March 18, 2016, but the 31st branch of the Supreme Court annulled this ruling upon the family of the victim's objection and sent it to a parallel branch. The parallel branch issued a retribution sentence for Kalhari in February 2017. Kalhari's lawyers had previously warned about "political and security influences" in this case and stated that the Ministry of Education and Aladdin Boroujerdi, the representative of Borujerd and head of the National Security Commission of the Parliament, had sent letters to the judiciary demanding "the harshest punishment" for their client. Additionally, Sara Najimi, another lawyer for Kalhari, mentioned in February 2017 that this case had become "entangled in ethnic and tribal issues." International laws explicitly urge countries to refrain from issuing death sentences for individuals under 18. However, Iran is among the few countries where death sentences are issued for minors under 18, and these sentences are carried out after they turn 18. Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Office issued a statement on Friday, February 16, calling for an "immediate halt" to the death penalty for individuals who commit crimes as minors, noting that within less than seven weeks of the new calendar year, three juvenile offenders have already been executed in Iran. According to the statistics provided in this recent statement, currently, 80 individuals in Iranian prisons are awaiting execution for crimes committed under the age of 18. Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the UN Human Rights Chief, has urged Iranian officials to "respect international laws and immediately cease the execution" of such offenders. According to Amnesty International statistics, at least 87 people in Iran have been executed for crimes committed while under the age of 18 from 2005 until the beginning of this year.