An Iranian woman was hanged on Saturday following her conviction for the murder of her alleged rapist.
Reyhaneh Jabbari, 26, was sentenced to death for killing Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, who was employed by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, Reuters reported.
Jabbari claimed the man sexually assaulted her in 2007 when she was 19-years-old, after he hired her as an interior decorator to work in his office. Sarbandi was stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife Jabbari had purchased two days before.
Under sharia law, which has been in place in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the victim’s relatives could have spared Jabbari the gallows by agreeing to accept blood money. Jabbari failed to get a reprieve within the 10-day deadline.
Jabbari was convicted of premeditated murder in 2009. The sentence was carried out after Iran’s Supreme Court upheld the verdict and the family refused blood money, CBC News reported.
Jabbari was sentenced to death under Koranic qisas (“eye for an eye”) law. She failed to convince judges in her case that she acted in self-defense.
International human rights groups were outraged by the execution. The United Nations said Jabbari did not receive a fair trial, while Amnesty International said she was held in solitary confinement for two months and tortured, with her claims never investigated.
[quote text_size=”small” author=”– Tobias Ellwood” author_title=”UK Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East”]
Actions like these do not help Iran build confidence or trust with the international community. I urge Iran to put a moratorium on all executions.
[/quote]
This hanging is the latest in a series of escalating executions in Iran under President Hassan Rouhani, who won the election in 2013 by promising liberal reform. Iran has executed at least 170 people this year alone, CNN reported. It executed more people than another other country except China, the world’s most populous country, in 2013.
