Iran has gone ahead with an execution
of a woman despite an international
campaign urging a reprieve. Reyhaneh Jabbari, 26, was hanged in a
Tehran prison on Saturday morning. She
had been convicted of killing a man she
said was trying to sexually abuse her. Jabbari was arrested in 2007 for the
murder of Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, a
former intelligence ministry worker. Human rights group Amnesty
International said her execution was
"deeply disappointing in the extreme". A campaign calling for a halt to the
execution was launched on Facebook and
Twitter last month and appeared to have
brought a temporary stay in execution. However, government news agency
Tasnim said on Saturday that Jabbari had
been executed after her relatives failed
to gain consent from the victim's family
for a reprieve. It said her claims of self-defence had not
been proved in court. A Facebook page set up to campaign for a stay now says simply: "Rest in peace". 'True intentions' Jabbari's mother, Shole Pakravan,
confirmed the execution in an interview
with BBC Persian, saying she was going
to the cemetery to see her daughter's
body. Execution room in Virginia, United
States Global executions for 2013 China: 1,000+ Iran: 369+ Iraq: 169+ Saudi Arabia: 79+ United States: 39 Somalia: 34+ Sudan: 21+ Yemen: 13+ Japan: 8 Others: 42+ (in 12 countries) Source: Amnesty International Rise in number of global executions Ms Pakravan had been allowed to see her
daughter for an hour on Friday. After her arrest, Jabbari had been placed
in solitary confinement for two months,
where she reportedly did not have access
to a lawyer or her family. She was sentenced to death by a criminal
court in Tehran in 2009. Amnesty International said she was
convicted after a deeply flawed
investigation. Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty's Deputy
Director for the Middle East and North
Africa Programme said: "This is another
bloody stain on Iran's human rights
record." "Tragically, this case is far from
uncommon. Once again Iran has insisted
on applying the death penalty despite
serious concerns over the fairness of the
trial." Amnesty said that although Jabbari
admitted to stabbing Abdolali Sarbandi
once in the back, she alleged that there
was someone else in the house who
actually killed him. Jalal Sarbandi, the victim's eldest son,
said Jabbari had refused to identify the
man. He told Iranian media in April: "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," The United Nations says Iran has
executed about 250 people this year.