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Excerpt: "Iran has executed a woman who killed a man she said was trying to sexually abuse her, in defiance of an international campaign to spare her life."

Iran executed designer Reyhaneh Jabbari despite international pressure for a retrial. (photo: Heronas)
Iran executed designer Reyhaneh Jabbari despite international pressure for a retrial. (photo: Heronas)


Iran Executes Reyhaneh Jabbari Despite Global Appeals for Retrial

By Guardian UK

25 October 14

 

Activists say designer killed man in self defence after he tried to sexually assault her, and confession came under duress

ran has executed a woman who killed a man she said was trying to sexually abuse her, in defiance of an international campaign to spare her life.

Reyhaneh Jabbari, 26, was hanged at dawn on Saturday in a Tehran prison for the murder of a former intelligence official, the official IRNA news agency reported on Saturday.

A message posted on the homepage of a Facebook campaign that was set up to try to save her, but which now states “rest in peace,” confirmed the report.

Jabbari, an interior designer, had spent five years on death row for the stabbing of Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi in 2007. The UN and groups including Amnesty International had said her confession was obtained under intense pressure and threats from Iranian prosecutors, and she should have had a retrial.

Ahmed Shaheed, the UN’s human rights rapporteur on Iran, said in April that the killing was an act of self defence: Sarbandi had offered to hire Jabbari to redesign his office and took her to an apartment where he tried to sexually abuse her.

Iranian actors and other prominent figures had appealed for a stay of execution, echoing similar calls in the west.

Efforts for clemency had intensified in recent weeks. Jabbari’s mother was allowed to visit her for one hour on Friday, Amnesty said, a custom that tends to precede executions in Iran.

However, Sarbandi’s family insists that the murder was premeditated and that Jabbari had confessed to buying a knife two days before the killing.

According to Jalal Sarbandi, the victim’s eldest son, Jabbari testified that a man was present in the apartment where his father was killed “but she refuses to reveal his identity”.

He told Shargh and Etemad, two of Iran’s reformist daily newspapers, in April that his family “would not even contemplate mercy until truth is unearthed.”

“Only when her true intentions are exposed and she tells the truth about her accomplice and what really went down will we be prepared to grant mercy,” he said at the time.

According to the United Nations, more than 250 people have been executed in Iran since the beginning of 2014.

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