Reprieve: Reyhaneh Jabbari was set be
hanged tomorrow morning after seven years in prison. She killed a man
she said was trying to rape her
A
26-year-old Iranian woman who was going to be hanged tomorrow after
killing a man she claims was trying to rape her has had a stay of
execution.
Reyhaneh
Jabbari was sentenced to death by a criminal court in Tehran in 2009
after what Amnesty International called a 'deeply flawed investigation
and trial which failed to examine all of the evidence'.
In
2007 the former decorator stabbed Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, a former
employee of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, who she claims lured her to
his house with a promise of work and tried to sexually assault her.
Her
mother, Shole Paravan, confirmed the execution had been postponed.
Today she and other supporters of Jabbari went to Rajaiy Shahr Prison,
about 20 miles west of Tehran, to protest the pending execution.
Amnesty International said the execution has only been delayed for 10 days.
Paravan told Fox News about the heart-breaking farewell phone call she received from her daughter before the postponement.
'I
am currently handcuffed and there is a car waiting outside to take me
for the execution of the sentence,' Jabbari told her mother.
'Goodbye, dear Mum. All of my pains will finish early tomorrow morning.
'I’ll
see you in the next world and I will never leave you again because
being separated from you is the most difficult thing to do in the
world.”
There
are concerns over the way the case was handled by Iranian authorities.
Amnesty reports she was placed in solitary confinement for two months,
where she did not have access to a lawyer or her family.
Earlier
Jabbari’s mother said in a Facebook post that prison authorities told
her she would have to go to the facility to 'collect the body'
tomorrow.
Raha
Bahreini, rersearcher on Iran, says the threat of execution still
looms, as under the Iranian law 'qesas', or 'retribution-in-kind', the
family of the dead man can still demand that she die.
She told MailOnline: 'It's good news but there is still serious concern because her sentence is still in place.
'It can still be carried out at any time at the request of the deceased's family.
'It
is not the first time she has been taken to be executed and it was
cancelled. You can only imagine the level of psychological damage that
inflicts on her and her family.'
Reyhaneh Jabbari handcuffed at police
headquarters in Tehran after she was arrested for the murder of a former
intelligence official in 2007. Amnesty International called the
investigation and trial 'deeply flawed'
'Instead
of continuing to execute people, authorities in Iran should reform
their judicial system, which dangerously relies on processes which fail
to meet international law and standards for fair trial,' added Hassiba
Hadj Sahraoui, Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director at Amnesty
International.
'Under
international human rights standards people charged with crimes
punishable by death are entitled to the strictest observance of all fair
trial guarantees.'
The
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which
opposes the nation's leadership, said she was secretly transferred
between prisons in a bid to prevent protests by other inmates who are
sympathetic to her plight.
A man who killed an Iranian youth in a
street fight with a knife in 2007, is brought to the gallows during his
execution ceremony in the northern Iran city of Nowshahr. The mother of
the victim spared his life soon after
Revolutionary justice: Iranians watch the execution of two convicted gang rapists in 2002
The organisation also claims that Jabbari underwent 'savage tortures' to extract a confession.
A
statement said: 'The misogynic regime of the mullahs is attempting to
intensify the atmosphere of terror in the society and to terrorise all
women and youth who have not succumbed to the oppression and vulgarly of
regime’s elements.'
MEP
Gérard Deprez, the chair of Friends of a Free Iran, a pressure group in
the European Parliament, earlier called on Iran to halt the execution.
He
said: 'Hassan Rouhani’s government has hanged more than 1,000 people,
many of them in public squares in Iranian cities. This is the worst
record by any Iranian president for the past 25 years.
'If
human rights are not improving in Iran, continued talks will only be
seen as a green light for further aggression by the regime against its
people as well as spreading its terror to other countries of the region.
'It is time the west imposes sanctions on Iran’s human rights violations with no further delay.' DAILYMAIL.CO.UK
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