Watchdog

Iranian human rights activists say the execution of juvenile offender Delara Darabi has been postponed, RFE/RL reports.

Darabi, who was due to be executed on April 20, was sentenced to death for a murder she allegedly committed at the age of 17.

Darabi's lawyer, Abdolsamad Khoramshahi, said the victim's family has refused to attend the execution by hanging. Iranian law requires that the verdict be carried out only in the presence of the victim's family, resulting in the postponement.

Khoramshahi said the victim's family has not changed its demand for the execution.

Darabi originally confessed to murdering an elderly female relative during a robbery. But she subsequently retracted her confession, saying that her boyfriend committed the murder and she agreed to take the blame when he told her she was too young to be sentenced to death.

Her lawyer says there were shortcomings in the proceedings.

A court in the Kazakh city of Taraz is scheduled to start hearings into the case against an independent Kazakh journalist on April 23, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reports.

Ramazan Esergepov, editor in chief and owner of the weekly "Alma-Ata Info," is accused of revealing state secrets in an article printed in his newspaper in November.

His wife, Raushan, told RFE/RL that her husband's lawyers have been unable to obtain rights to access restricted state documents in order to be able to defend him in the courtroom.

Prominent Kazakh lawyer Mustakhim Tuleev, who intends to defend Esergepov, says that officials in Taraz have refused to provide him with access to the documents, saying that Tuleev is not a member of the Lawyers' Association in Taraz.

Esergepov has been held in the city's detention center since early January.

Local authorities say that since the article in question was about companies in Taraz, he must be tried in that city.

Rights activists and media watchdogs in Kazakhstan say the charges are politically motivated.