Mohammad Hossein Rezaee, who got arrested for murder during a group fight in 2007 when he was a 16-year-old minor and received a death sentence, was executed in the early hours of Thursday in Lakan prison in Rasht city in the north of Iran.

Human Rights in Iran organization had reported on Wednesday that Mohammad Hossein Rezaee was transferred to solitary confinement in Lakan prison in Rasht, and his family has been called for a final visit.

The organization emphasized that he was sentenced to death in a “process full of ambiguity”.

Also on Wednesday, Amnesty International released a statement pointing out the unfair trial procedure of Mohammad Hossein Rezaee which led to his conviction and emphasizing that despite his young age, officials kept him in solitary confinement for a very long time, while repeatedly beating him with sticks, punching and kicking him, and whipping him with a hose to force him to confess to the murder.

According to the statement, the preliminary court convicted Rezaee based on the forced confession and sentenced him to death, even though he recanted his confessions in court and said they were given under torture.

Iranian officials intended to execute Rezaee two weeks ago, but postponed it due to international backlash. His execution was stayed three days after his transfer to solitary confinement and he was returned to the general population.

Amnesty International’s statement reiterates that the execution of a person who was a minor at the time of the crime is a serious violation of international human rights laws.

Amnesty emphasized that the insistence of the Islamic Republic officials on Rezaee’s execution despite the very unfair trial procedure and failure to investigate his claims of torture and other mistreatments adds to this injustice.

In April of this year, two more young men who were arrested as minors, Shayan Saeedpour and Majid Esmaeelzadeh were executed.

According to Amnesty International, in 2019 at least six people were executed who were under 18 when they were arrested and warned that there are at least 90 convicted minors in Iranian prisons awaiting execution.

Iran is one of the last remaining countries in the world that still executes people who commit crimes when they are under 18, thus violating its commitments to international agreements and the children’s rights convention.

Iranian authorities have executed hundreds of people and sentenced tens of thousands of others to jail and lashes during the past year, the Iranian Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported in its annual report for 2020, released on December 29.