Iranian Woman Who Killed Her Rapist Finally Executed Despite International Pressure To Spare Her Life

Jabbari in 2008, at a court in her defense during trial

Iranian woman Reyhaneh Jabbari who spent five years on death row for the murder of a former intelligence official, has finally being executed despite international pressure to free her. An official IRNA news agency said she has hanged on dawn today, Saturday Oct.25th.

 Amnesty International said in a statement issued late Friday that the 26 years old, an interior designer, was due to be executed for the 2007 stabbing of Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi.
 A UN human rights monitor had said the killing of Sarbandi was an act of self-defence after he tried to sexually assault Jabbari, and that her trial in 2009 had been deeply flawed.

Iranian actors and other prominent figures had appealed for a stay of execution, echoing similar calls in the West. A Facebook campaign that was created to save Jabbari, now states "Rest In Peace".

 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.

News Source: AFP