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| Reyhaneh Jabbari defends herself during the first hearing of her trial in 2008. |
Iran has ignored an international campaign to spare the life of a 26-year-old woman convicted of murder by hanging her at dawn on Saturday.
Reyhaneh Jabbari had spent five years on death row for stabbing a 47-year-old surgeon who had previously worked for the intelligence ministry, the official IRNA news agency reported.
The UN and bodies including the European Union and Amnesty International had said that the interior designer’s confession for killing Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi in 2007 was obtained under intense pressure and threats from Iranian prosecutors, and she should have had a retrial.
Ahmed Shaheed, the UN’s human rights rapporteur on Iran, said in April that the killing was an act of self defence. Sarbandi had offered to hire Jabbari to redesign his office and took her to an apartment where he tried to sexually abuse her.
Iranian actors and other prominent figures had also appealed for a stay of execution.
Efforts for clemency had intensified in recent weeks. 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 insisted 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 had refused to reveal his identity.
He said 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.
Jabbari’s plea of self-defence failed to persuade judges at various stages of the appeal process up to Iran’s Supreme Court and she remained in prison throughout.
Her last chance of reprieve lay with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but he failed to intervene. » | Chris Johnston and agencies | Saturday, October 25, 2014
