PUBLIC AI Index: MDE 13/004/2008

08 January 2008

Further Information on UA 334/07 (MDE 13/149/2007, 17 December 2007) Imminent execution

IRAN Raheleh Zamani (f), aged 27

Raheleh Zamani was hanged on 2 January in Tehran's Evin Prison, along with seven men convicted of murder. She was sentenced to qesas-e nafs (retribution in kind) in October 2005 for the murder earlier the same year of her husband, Mohammad Zamani, whom she alleged was having an extra-marital affair. Five other men were executed on the same day, in Qom and Zahedan.

Raheleh Zamani, a mother of two children aged five and three, had reportedly said in her defence that she was threatened with violence by her husband each time she asked him to end his affair. She said that she had never meant to kill her husband, but just wanted to “teach him a lesson”. A month and a half prior to the murder, Raheleh Zamani had given birth to her second child, a son. She may have been suffering from severe post-natal depression.

Nobel peace prize laureate and human rights defender, Shirin Ebadi, and The Defenders of Human Rights Centre, the human rights group she is a member of, reportedly criticised the rising number of executions in Iran and the execution of Raheleh Zamani. A statement issued by the group explained that "Judicial officials had agreed to delay her execution for a month... but she was hanged suddenly," the statement said. "On the evening of 1 January they informed her of the execution and then, after just 12 hours, they hanged her.” The statement added that "Four reputable lawyers had also cast doubt on the case [but] sadly, the efforts of human rights groups fail because of a legal vacuum as well as the resistance and indifference of an extremist current in the judicial system,"

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