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May 21, 2006
Iran: Last Chance To Save Nazanin From Islamist Regime
The young woman pictured at left is Nazanin Mahabad Fatehi. On January 3, she was sentenced to death for murder, though her "crime" had been to protect herself from rapists. This is the account from the website which aims to save her from being hanged:
According to the Iranian daily Etemaad, then 17-year-old Nazanin and her niece had been spending some time in a park west of Tehran with their boyfriends, when three men started harassing them.On May 17, a letter was written by a music recording artist to Kofi Annan, which can be found here.The girls' boyfriends fled from the scene, leaving them helpless behind. The men pushed Nazanin and her niece down on the ground and tried to rape them, and to protect herself, she took out a knife from her pocket and stabbed one of the men in the hand.
The girls tried to escape, but the men overtook them, and at this point, Nazanin stabbed one of the other men in the chest, which eventually killed him. According to the newspaper, she broke down in tears when she told the court: "I wanted to defend myself and my niece. I did not want to kill that boy. At the heat of the moment I did not know what to do because no one came to our help." Nevertheless, the court sentenced her to death by hanging.
In a western country Nazanin would probably be acquitted or at most receive a short prison sentence, as she obviously acted in self-defense. Furthermore, since she was only 17 years old, she would be treated as a minor. In Iran however, the minimum age for the death penalty is 15 years for males, and 9, yes nine years for females. Although there is no record of girls that young being executed, the fact that the law opens for this speaks clearly about what kind regime Iran is.
Another point worth noticing, is that if Nazanin had let the men rape her, she could in the worst case have been arrested for extra-martial sex, which carries a maximum penalty of 100 lashes.
Next week, the Iranian Supreme Court is due to review her case, and as the Save Nazanin website says: "If the death sentence is upheld, the execution may be carried out shortly after. This means that we may only have one or two weeks left to save Nazanin. Based on past cases, it is known that if the Iranian government receives official letters from the UN, EU, USA or big and influencial international bodies, they often do not go ahead with the execution. We need the most amount of public outcry this week."
One thing you can do to help is to sign the online petition to add your voice to the 140,000 people who have already pledged their voices against injustice. The petition can be found HERE.
Click on the link here, and find out more about the case, and discover what else you can do to help. Please take note of this, as time is running out.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at May 21, 2006 3:05 AM
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