Young Iranian Girl Sentenced to Death for Killing her Attacker

As reported in an article issued by Wikepedia, the Free Encyclopedia, 18 year old Nazanine Mahabad Fatehi has been tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by hanging for “stabbing a man who she claims tried to rape her and her 15 year old niece.” Wikepedia reports that Nazanine, then 17 years old, and her niece, Sumayeh, then 15 years old, “were in a park in Karaj, west of Tehran with their boyfriends, when three men started harassing them. The girls’ boyfriends fled from the scene, leaving the girls behind. The men then tried to rape them, and to protect herself, Nazanine took out a knife from her pocket and stabbed one of the men in the chest.”

Nazanine “claims she acted in self-defense” and many organizations, including Amnesty International, are lobbying in her defense. “I think cases like this are illustrative of the fact that there is a serious human rights crisis in Iran. It really is time for the international community to put those issues right at the top of the agenda,” says Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada.

Critics have pointed out that, “in another country she might be acquitted or receive only a short prison sentence,” but that “Iran has a young age of eligibility for the death penalty – 15 years for males, and 9 for females.”

Wikepedia reports that, “according to Iranian newspaper Hanshari and by order of the Superior Court of Islamic Republic, the death sentence of Nazarine was cancelled subject to payment of dieh (blood money) to the family of the alleged rapist killed.”

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