Unreported World

Yemen: Death Row Teenagers (2013x7)

Air date: May 24, 2013

Reporter Krishnan Guru-Murthy and director Daniel Bogado travel to Yemen to reveal the scores of young men locked up in prisons and awaiting execution for crimes they are accused of committing while they were children. And they meet the lawyer who, in a miscarriage of justice, was sentenced to death himself at the age of 16 and who is now on a mission to save others who should never have been given the death penalty. The Unreported World team accompanies Hafedh Ibrahim as he enters Taiz prison to meet a new young client. It's the same prison where Hafedh was once held on death row and where he was marched, handcuffed, from the cells to the execution spot and told to lie down on the sand ready to be executed. Hafedh tells Guru-Murthy how, according to Yemeni law, as a juvenile he should never have faced the death penalty. His campaigning from inside prison paid off. He describes hearing the phone call coming in to cancel his execution three minutes before he was due to be shot. Yemen has one of the world's highest rates of gun ownership. In this tribal society boys are given guns and expected to become men. The prisons are full of young prisoners convicted of murder. According to Yemeni law, offenders under 18 cannot be sentenced to death. But most people here don't have documents proving their age so juveniles are often mistaken as adults. That problem is intensified by the fact Yemeni culture has tended to treat boys as adults at the age of 15. Hafedh is in the prison to meet Abdul Rahman, a boy accused of murder. Abdul hasn't been tried, but has already been in prison for nearly two years. His sister claims that he killed her husband. Abdul says that he's being framed and in any case, he was 16 when the death took place. Hafedh has Abdul's birth certificate, which he says should prove that he's telling the truth. However, he tells Guru-Murthy that many judges don't accept ID documents as proof of age and believe that any murder