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| - Amnesty International on Tuesday urged Iran not to execute a 20-year-old man it says was convicted of murder on confessions partly obtained through torture. "Iran's authorities must immediately halt the execution of Hossein Shahbazi scheduled for 28 June," the rights group's deputy regional director Diana Eltahawy said in a statement. "Using the death penalty against someone who was a child at the time of the crime is prohibited under international human rights law and violates Iran's international obligations." Shahbazi was arrested in December 2018 and sentenced to death in January last year after a "grossly unfair" trial, Amnesty said. "He was convicted, in part, based on 'confessions' that he said he made after being subjected to torture and other ill-treatment" in detention, it added. Eltahawy said that "going ahead with this execution would be an abhorrent assault on children's rights and would make an absolute mockery of justice." "The Iranian authorities must quash Hossein Shahbazi's conviction and sentence and grant him a fair retrial in full compliance with the principles of juvenile justice, excluding coerced 'confessions'," she said. Iran executed at least three juvenile offenders last year, the statement said, while "scores of others remain on death row". UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said Tuesday that at least 95 people had been executed in Iran so far this year, including six women. "Over 80 child offenders are on death row, with at least four at risk of imminent execution," she told a session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva where she was presenting a report on human rights in Iran. Last year, the Islamic republic executed at least 267 people, including nine women, she added. "The secretary-general continues to be deeply concerned by widespread use of the death penalty and its arbitrary imposition for a range of acts that under international law do not constitute 'most serious crimes'," she said. Death sentences were frequently imposed "based on forced confessions extracted through torture or after serious violations of the right to a fair trial", she added. bur/par
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