Iran to hang woman who killed in ‘self defence’

Iran
to hang woman who killed in ‘self defence’

TEHRAN,
Jan 7 (AFP) – An 18-year-old Iranian woman who killed a man she said tried
to rape her has been sentenced to death for murder, according to a press
report Saturday.

The
woman identified only as Nazanin claimed self defence during her trial
after she stabbed a man to death in March 2005, the Etemad newspaper
reported.

It
said Nazanin, who was 17 at the time, had been out with her niece and
their boyfriends on a road west of Tehran when two men started harassing
them and then tried to rape them after the boyfriends had run away.

“I
committed murder to defend myself and my niece, I did not mean to kill
him. I did not know what to do because nobody came to help us,” the paper
quoted her as saying during her trial.

In
January 2005, after seven years of legal wrangling, the Iranian judiciary
acquitted a woman who killed a senior police officer she said had
attempted to rape on the Gulf island of Kish.

The
European Union and international human rights groups have been pressuring
Iran to stop executing
those under age 18, and the UN General Assembly has adopted a non-binding
resolution denouncing the practice of executing minors in
Iran.

Iran‘s
ultra-conservative judiciary has responded to critics by saying minors are
not executed in the Islamic republic. It has also proposed a law that
would prohibit the death penalty or flagellation for those who were minors
at the time of the crimes.
According to Iranian law, a boy can be
executed from the age of 15, and a girl from the age of nine. However, the
execution is carried out when the offender is over 18 years old.

The
Iranian press reported a disabled man had been executed in public on
Friday, the first of the year. At least 81 people were executed in
Iran last year, according to an
AFP tally based on press reports and witnesses. Amnesty International says
at least 159 people were executed in Iran in
2004.

Capital
offences in Iran include murder, rape,
armed robbery, apostasy, blasphemy, serious drug trafficking, repeated
sodomy, adultery or prostitution, treason and espionage.
hif/sgh/txw