Sunday, October 26, 2014

Previous Next 'Please don't cry. I love you. I wish I could have hugged you until I died': Iranian woman's heartrending message to her mother before she was hanged for killing the man who 'tried to rape her'

The Iranian woman executed for killing a man she said was trying to rape her urged her mother not to mourn in a will written shortly before her death.
Reyhaneh Jabbari, 27, was hanged at dawn on Saturday despite international outcry and a high-profile campaign within the repressive state urging authorities to stay her sentence.
In her last will and testament, the young woman said that she did not want to be buried in a grave where her mother would go to cry and suffer, nor did she want her to wear black.
‘I don’t want to rot in the soil. Please don’t cry. I love you’, she told Sholeh Pakravan. ‘I wish I could have hugged you until I died’.
Put to death: Reyhaneh Jabbari was hanged at dawn on Saturday morning despite calls for clemency
Put to death: Reyhaneh Jabbari was hanged at dawn on Saturday morning despite calls for clemency
Jabbari also asked that her organs were donated anonymously, according to The Sunday Times.
Footage today emerged of a distraught Mrs Pakravan wailing outside the gates of Rajai Shahr Prison, near Tehran, after her daughter was put to death.

She had been summoned to the site to see Jabbari for the last time on Friday and had epxressed her bitter torment and disbelief in a Facebook post earlier this week.
‘After seven and a half years of pain and suffering, is this how my dear child comes to her end?’, she wrote.
This tribute appeared on the Facebook page dedicated to the 27-year-old titled Save Reyhaneh Jabbari From Execution In Iran
This tribute appeared on the Facebook page dedicated to the 27-year-old titled Save Reyhaneh Jabbari From Execution In Iran
Jabbari was sentenced to death in 2009 for stabbing to death a former employee of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence, Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, who allegedly drugged and attempted to rape her
The execution was condemned by the US State Department, the British government and by human rights groups including Amnesty International. 
'The shocking news that Reyhaneh Jabbari has been executed is deeply disappointing in the extreme. This is another bloody stain on Iran’s human rights record,' said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa Programme. 
'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.' 
Jabbari was sentenced to death in 2009 for stabbing to death a former employee of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence, Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi. 
The execution was condemned by the US State Department, the British government and by human rights groups including Amnesty International
The execution was condemned by the US State Department, the British government and by human rights groups including Amnesty International
In her last will and testament, the young woman (left) said that she did not want to be buried in a grave where her mother Sholeh Pakravan (right) would go to cry and suffer, nor did she want her to wear black
In her last will and testament, the young woman (left) said that she did not want to be buried in a grave where her mother Sholeh Pakravan (right) would go to cry and suffer, nor did she want her to wear black
In her last will and testament, the young woman (left) said that she did not want to be buried in a grave where her mother Sholeh Pakravan (right) would go to cry and suffer, nor did she want her to wear black
'After seven and a half years of pain and suffering, is this how my dear child comes to her end?', her mother wrote on Facebook
'After seven and a half years of pain and suffering, is this how my dear child comes to her end?', her mother wrote on Facebook
The murder - which took place two years earlier in 2007, when Jabbari was just 19. She had met him in a cafe and he had convinced her to visit his office to discuss a business deal. 
While there Sarbandi allegedly drugged and attempted to rape her and she grabbed a pocket knife and stabbed him. Jabbari maintained until her death that another man who was present at the time killed him.
Amnesty International described the investigation as 'deeply flawed' and said that the trial had failed to examine all the evidence. The organisation also said that Jabbari confessed after being subjected to 'savage tortures'.
It is claimed that she spent two months in solitary confinement where she did not have access to a lawyer or her family. 
The date of her execution has been repeatedly delayed, first postponed in April after a global petition to spare her life attracted 20,000 signatures. 
Reyhaneh Jabbari pictured 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'
Reyhaneh Jabbari pictured 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'
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
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
Earlier this month, the death sentence was deferred again, apparently after Jabbari had said her final goodbyes to her family, while a government car waited to transport her to the execution site.
Throughout the past months, her friends and family have been a regular presence outside the prison, staging protests calling for release. 
Her mother also gave emotional interviews discussing her daughter's plight and begging the Iranian government to spare her life.
Speaking earlier this month via Skype to Fox News, Pakravan said: 'I wish they would come tie a rope around my neck and kill me instead, but to allow Rayhaneh to come back home.'
'The only thing I want ... from God, from people around the world ... in any way, in any form, is I just want to bring Rayhaneh back home. 
Throughout the past months, Ms Jabbari's friends and family have been a regular presence outside the prison, staging protests calling for release
Throughout the past months, Ms Jabbari's friends and family have been a regular presence outside the prison, staging protests calling for release
Adistraught Mrs Pakravan is seen wailing outside the gates of Rajai Shahr Prison, near Tehran, after her daughter was put to death
Adistraught Mrs Pakravan is seen wailing outside the gates of Rajai Shahr Prison, near Tehran, after her daughter was put to death
Adistraught Mrs Pakravan is seen wailing outside the gates of Rajai Shahr Prison, near Tehran, after her daughter was put to death
'I am a mother. No mother can accept the death of her child.' 
The execution was carried out after Sarbandi's family refused to pardon Jabbari or accept blood money. An estimated 250 people have been put to death in Iran this year. 
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.'  

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