Iran hangs teen for rape committed as a juvenile, rights group says

 
A teenager convicted of raping a boy in Iran was hanged in what an Amnesty International official called proof of the country's "sickening enthusiasm" for putting juvenile offenders to death.

The July 18 hanging of Hassan Afshar, 19, at Arak prison in Markazi Province was the first confirmed execution of a juvenile offender in the country this year, Amnesty International said.

Afshar was a 17-year-old high school student when he was arrested in December 2014 after being accused with two other youths of forcing a teenage boy to have sexual intercourse, according to the rights group.

Afshar, who maintained the sexual acts were consensual, was convicted last year of "lavat-e be onf," or forced male-to-male anal intercourse.

Amnesty International said the execution was carried out even though judiciary officials had assured Afshar's family that his case would be reviewed next month.

"Iran has proved that its sickening enthusiasm for putting juveniles to death, in contravention of international law, knows no bounds," Magdalena Mughrabi, deputy Middle East and North Africa program director at Amnesty International, said in a statement.

The rights group said the young man had no access to a lawyer and that the judiciary rushed his prosecution, and convicted and sentenced him to death within two months of his arrest.

Mughrabi said Afshar was not informed of the death sentence for about seven months "because they did not want to cause him distress -- and yet astonishingly were still prepared to execute him."