Iran hanging draws condemnation

October 26, 2014 12:00 am | Updated May 24, 2016 03:24 pm IST - TEHRAN:

Woman executed for killing officer who tried to ‘sexually abuse’ her

Iran on Saturday hanged a woman convicted of murdering a former intelligence officer she claimed had tried to sexually assault her, defying international appeals for a stay on execution.

Reyhaneh Jabbari (26), who had been on death row for five years, was put to death at dawn, the official IRNA news agency quoted the Tehran prosecutor’s office as saying.

The execution drew condemnation from the United States and human rights monitor Amnesty International, which dubbed it “a bloody stain on Iran’s human rights record” and “an affront to justice”.

A message posted on the homepage of a Facebook campaign set up to try to save Jabbari noted the “sad news” of her death, adding the words “Rest in Peace” alongside pictures of her as a young child.

Jabbari, an interior designer, was executed for the fatal 2007 stabbing of Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi.

Confession, deadlines

The United Nations and human rights groups had said a confession to her crime was obtained under intense pressure and threats from Iranian prosecutors, and that she should have had a retrial.

The judiciary had given several deadlines for Sarbandi’s family to spare Jabbari under an Islamic Sharia law provision that allows a death sentence for murder to be commuted to jail time.

But relatives of Sarbandi, a 47-year-old surgeon who earlier worked for the intelligence ministry, refused the pleas, demanding, according to Iranian media, that she tell “the truth.”

A U.N. human rights monitor said the killing came in self-defence after Sarbandi tried to sexually abuse Jabbari, and that the condemned woman’s trial in 2009 had been deeply flawed.

But a medical report, prepared for the judiciary and quoted by IRNA in its Saturday dispatch, said Sarbandi was stabbed in the back and that the killing had been premeditated.

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 had refused to reveal his identity.

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

Ahmed Shaheed, the U.N.’s human rights rapporteur on Iran, said in April that Sarbandi had offered to hire Jabbari to redesign his office and took her to an apartment where he sexually assaulted her.

However, the victim’s family rejected that account and said Jabbari had confessed to buying a knife two days before the killing. — AFP

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