Iran secretly flogged and executed two 17-year-old cousins in what rights group Amnesty International described as the country’s “utter disdain for international law and the rights of children.”

Mehdi Sohrabifar and Amin Sedaghat, who had been convicted of rape, were executed Thursday at a prison in the southern city of Shiraz “following an unfair trial,” Amnesty International said Monday.

The boys were unaware that they had been sentenced to death until shortly before their executions and bore lash marks on their bodies, indicating they had been flogged, the group said.

Their families and lawyers also were not informed about the executions in advance, according to the report.

“The Iranian authorities have once again proved that they are sickeningly prepared to put children to death, in flagrant disregard of international law,” Philip Luther, Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa Director, said in a statement.

“It seems they cruelly kept these two boys in the dark about their death sentences for two years, flogged them in the final moments of their lives and then carried out their executions in secret,” he added.

“The use of the death penalty against people who were under 18 at the time of the crime is strictly prohibited under international human rights law and is a flagrant assault on children’s rights.”

The teens — who had been held in a juvenile center in Shiraz since they were arrested in 2017 — were transferred to Adelabad prison on April 24, apparently without knowing why.

The same day, their families were allowed to visit them, but were not told that it was in preparation for their execution.

The next day, the relatives received a call from a state forensic institute informing them of the executions and asking them to collect the bodies.

“We have identified a trend in which Iran’s authorities are carrying out executions of juvenile offenders in secret and without giving advance notice to the families, seemingly in a deliberate attempt to avoid global outrage,” Luther said.

Iran is the top executioner of children in the world, according to Amnesty International.

“As a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Iran is legally obliged to treat anyone under the age of 18 as a child and ensure that they are never subjected to the death penalty or life imprisonment,” the group said.

Amnesty International has recorded the execution of 97 people in the country who were under the age of 18 at the time of the crime between 1990 and 2018.