Watchdog

Less than a week after an Iranian official stated that courts will be ordered to commute death sentences handed to juvenile offenders, the same official has cast doubt on that decision, saying that only a victim's family could commute a killer's sentence.

The state news agency IRNA quoted Assistant Prosecutor-General Hossein Zabhi as saying on October 15 that death sentences for offenders under 18 will be commuted to life in prison, and in some parole cases reduced to 15 years. The decision was welcomed by human rights groups, which have sought an end to the death penalty altogether in Iran and in particular to its use in minors' cases.

But on October 20, the "Etemad-e Melli" daily quoted Zabhi as saying that "only if the next of kin give their consent can there be a reduction in the punishment," Reuters reported. "The principle of retribution...is not up to the government, rather it is up to the private plaintiff," Zabhi was quoted as saying.

Under Iranian law, the family of a murder victim can pardon a convicted murderer by accepting "blood money," allowing the convict to serve a prison sentence instead.

Zabhi said that Iran's prosecutor-general and supreme court chief, who have to approve all death sentences, would commute the punishment in the case of convicted juvenile drug traffickers, but he did not refer to other capital offenses including rape and murder.

U.S.-based Human Rights Watch reports that Iran has executed six juvenile offenders this year, and says that a moratorium on the death penalty for minors would save at least 130 convicts.

The Russian human rights organization Memorial has reported a case in the southern republic of Daghestan in which a man was seized, held incommunicado without trial, and tortured, apparently under suspicion as a terror suspect.

Memorial writes that unidentified security agents arrested Nariman Mamedyarov, a 33-year-old resident of Makhachkala, Daghestan's capital, on his way home from work on September 25. Mamedyarov's family was unable to obtain any information about his whereabouts for nine days.

When Vladimir Lukin, Russia's human rights ombudsman, intervened in the case, the republic's law enforcement agencies revealed that Mamedyarov was being held by police in Buynaks, 40 kilometers west of Makhachkala. He had been subjected to torture and suffered a broken arm that had begun to develop gangrene, his lawyer told RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service.

In spite of pleas from human rights groups, Narimanov has not been released from detention yet and may have to appear in court soon.

Memorial accuses the Daghestan authorities of fabricating criminal charges of Islamic extremism against innocent people in an apparent attempt to show government success in fighting terrorism, and believes that Mamedyarov's detention was one such case.