As of February 2008 Stop Child Executions Campaign has recorded 92 children facing executions worldwide: 87 in Iran, 2 in Saudi Arabia, 2 in Sudan and 1 in Yemen, all Islamic countries. In 2007, at least 7 were reported to have been executed : 6 in Iran by hanging and 1 boy was beheaded in Saudi Arabia.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
PUBLIC
AI Index: MDE 23/006/2008
08 February 2008
UPDATE
Further Information on UA 175/07 (MDE 23/026/2007, 05 July 2007)/ Death sentence
SAUDI ARABIA
Rizana Nafeek (f), aged 19, Sri Lankan national
A court in Saudi Arabia is reported to be considering Sri Lankan domestic worker Rizana Nafeek's appeal against her death sentence. If the sentence is upheld, she could be at imminent risk of execution. This concern is heightened as the rate of executions has increased in 2008, with at least 25 people, including three women, executed since 8 January. At least 158 people, including three women, were executed in 2007.
Rizana Nafeek was sentenced to death on 16 June 2007 for a murder committed while she was 17 years old. Saudi Arabia is a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which prohibits the execution of offenders for crimes committed when they were under 18 years old.
Rizana Nafeek was arrested in May 2005 on charges of murdering an infant in her care. She had no access to lawyers either during interrogation or at her trial, and it is believed that she confessed to the murder during police questioning, only to later retract her confession.
She apparently told the authorities that she was born in February 1988, but they seem to have ignored this on the basis that her passport indicated that she was born in February 1982. According to information available to Amnesty International she was not allowed to present her birth certificate or other evidence of her age.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
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