How much for a life?

£40,000 per juvenile on death row in Iran: cheap at twice the price?   

A human rights lawyer in Iran has launched an appeal to raise the necessary financial compensation to save the lives of four juvenile offenders facing execution in Iran. Under Iranian law (based on the Sharia code), families of the victim can pardon the convicted person in return for a sum of ‘blood money’.

The amounts of money asked for the victims’ family are no nominal figures. It is extremely rare that death row prisoners can be pardoned in this manner, because of the vast sums involved. Behnoud Shojaie, who killed another boy in a fight when he was 17, was hanged earlier this month after his family failed to raise the £1.25m asked for by the boy’s family.

In comparison, Mohammad Mostafaie’s clients are positively cheap. He is attempting to raise £120,000 in order to pay for the lives of four of his young offenders, and has set up an account on the website www.stopchildexecutions.com to receive donations. One of his clients, Safar Angooti, has had his execution delayed for one month to give him a last chance to raise the money. And so Safar’s family must attempt to beg and borrow (although presumably not steal) in order to save their son’s life.

Attempting to put a financial value on the life of either the victim, or the person (in this case, child) who is convicted of killing him, is surely a tragic and grotesque practice. How can any sum of money make up for the murder of a loved one? Why should someone else die because he does not have the money to buy himself life? In Iran, apparently the rich have more right to live than the poor.

Iran is one of only three countries in the world which still executes juveniles – the others being Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Iran has recently taken seemingly hopeful steps towards outlawing this distasteful and discriminatory system, by announcing a moratorium on child executions.  In cases where the death sentence is demanded by the victim’s family, however, the moratorium does not apply, and children like Behnoud continue to be killed by the state.