The Sunday News
A 26-year-old Iranian woman convicted of murdering a man she accused of trying to rape her as a teenager was hanged on Saturday, the official news agency IRNA said, despite international pleas for her life to be spared.
Reyhaneh Jabbari walked to the gallows at dawn on Saturday in Tehran’s Evin prison after failing to secure a reprieve from the murder victim’s relatives within the 10-day deadline set by sharia law in force since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The death sentence sparked U.S. and European Union condemnation and the government of President Hassan Rouhani, who won elections last year on promises of liberal reform at home and easing Iran’s isolation abroad, to intervene to get it commuted.
Justice Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi said in early October that a “good ending” was in sight, but official media reported later that the slain man’s family could not be persuaded to approve leniency for Jabbari.
Jabbari was sentenced to death in accordance with Koranic “qisas”, or eye for an eye law after being found guilty of stabbing dead an older man with a kitchen knife in 2007. She had pleaded self-defense but failed to sway judges at various stages of appeal up to Iran’s Supreme Court and she remained in prison throughout. Jabbari’s last chance of reprieve lay with clerical Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose powers transcend all state mandates. But Khamenei never mentioned the case and has only rarely intervened in court cases regardless of political considerations.
Immediately after Saturday’s execution, the Tehran state prosecutor’s office issued a statement that appeared aimed at countering sympathy for Jabbari.
“Jabbari had repeatedly confessed to premeditated murder, then tried to divert the case from its course by inventing the rape charge,” said the statement carried by IRNA. — Reuters
