IRAN. IRAN PUBLICLY HANGS AFGHAN FOR CRIME COMMITTED AS MINOR

Iran publicly hanged Rostam Tajik, an Afghan national, for a crime he was alleged to have committed as a minor. Tajik, 20 years old, was hanged in a public park in the central Iranian city of Isfahan. The sentence was carried out in the presence of judicial officials.
Tajik had been sentenced to death for the murder of a woman on May 13, 2001, when he was just 16 years old.
A report in the semi-official Iran daily Kayhan said on December 6 that Tajik had initially fled to the town of Qazvin, west of Tehran, after the incident but was later apprehended.
On December 9, Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, had urged Tehran not to proceed with the execution of Tajik.