Stranded on Deathrow: Inside Iran's Teenage Girls Prison Where Inmates Await Execution (Photos)

Posted by Odinaka on Thu 28th Jan, 2016 - tori.ng

Sleeping in squalid conditions, queuing for hours on end for food and struggling to care for a newborn baby are just some of the horrifying challenges girls in Iran's grim prison's face.

Mahsa is 17. She falls in love with a boy and intends to marry him, but her father is against the marriage. One day she has an argument with her father, gets angry, and kills her father with a kitchen knife. Mahsa's brothers are requesting death penalty or lex talionis for her.

Award-winning photographer, Sadegh Souri, who lives in Tehran, has given an insight to the harsh conditions young people face in these grimy institutions called prison in Iran as they anticipate their fate.

Dozens of juvenile offenders some of whom are just 9-years old, are languishing on death row for crimes such as murder, drug trafficking and armed robbery.

Female inmates can keep their newborns with them in prison until they are two years old. Zahra has married in 14 and has two children. She is 17 now and she is in jail because of stealing women's mobiles.

In Iran, the second-biggest user of capital punishment in the world, young women can be hanged for crimes, following unfair trials, including those based on forced confessions extracted through torture and other ill-treatment.

The frightened girls are imprisoned in a Juvenile Delinquents Correction Centre after their sentence verdict and a large number of the inmates are then killed when they reach 18.

Shaqayeq, 15, has been in prison for almost a year on charge of armed robbery from a chain store in Tehran. Her grandmother had come to visit her after a year. Her death sentence has been issued and she must reach 18 so the verdict can be carried out

Last year there was a disturbing escalation in the use of the death penalty in Iran, with at least 830 people executed between 1 January and 1 November 2015. There were reports that at least four of these were juvenile offenders.

The clergy goes to the correction centre every day for the congregational prayer. After prayers, he talks about the correct upbringing methods for girls and prays to God to forgive them

The female inmates can come to the prison yard for one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening to exercise

The girls are photographed waiting in the queue for food. They sometimes have to stand there for hours before they are served

Nazanin is 16. She was arrested about six months ago for the possession of 621 grams of cocaine. The judge has not issued a verdict

Credits: Sadegh Souri / Mailonline