UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet , condemned the execution of Zeinab Sekaanvand Lokran, a young woman in Iran accused of killing her husband in 2012 at the age of 17.
Michelle Bachelet added in her statement that “her claims that she was coerced into confessing to the killing, and that she had been a victim of domestic violence, were reportedly not adequately examined during her trial.”
“The sheer injustice in the case of Zeinab Sekaanvand Lokran is deeply distressing,” High Commissioner Bachelet said. “The serious question marks over her conviction appear not to have been adequately addressed before she was executed. The bottom line is that she was a juvenile at the time the offence was committed and international law clearly prohibits the execution of juvenile offenders.”
“As a State party to both the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Iran has an obligation to abide by their provisions and to end the use of the death penalty against juvenile offenders,” Michelle Bachelet added.
She stressed that the UN Human Rights Office opposes the use of the death penalty in all circumstances, as no judiciary in any part of the world is mistake-free.
Despite a number of appeals from UN Special Rapporteurs and the UN Secretary-General since her conviction in October 2014, Zeinab Sekaanvand, was hanged on October 2, 2018 in Iran’s Urmia Prison along with four other prisoners.
Forced into marriage at the age of 15, Zeinab Sekaanvand lived two painful years, being battered everyday by her husband. The 24-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman was convicted of killing her abusive husband at the age of 17. She told the judge that her husband’s brother, who had raped her several times, had actually committed the murder.
Zeinab Sekaanvand is the 84th woman executed under Rouhani.
