“How is it possible that she was executed?!”

International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran,

A shocked and emotional Banafsheh Nayebpour, daughter of Iranian-Dutch citizen, Zahra Bahrami, who, according to a Fars News Agency report, was executed in the early morning hours of Saturday, 29 January 2010, talked to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran today. She said people have been calling her for the past hour to verify the news of her mother’s death. “How is such a thing possible? We had requested clemency, and we have not yet received a reply. They have not reviewed my mother’s other case, either. How is it possible that she was executed?” she said in disbelief.

Zahra Bahrami’s daughter was informed of her mother’s execution through phone calls from her friends and relatives on Saturday at around 4:00 p.m. “I called her lawyer. She had not been informed, either. I don’t know where to go now, of whom to seek information. Nobody is answering me now, because it’s past business hours. This means that my mother died this morning, when I was sleeping,” she said.

“Shouldn’t they have informed her family and lawyer before executing her? We should have gone to see her before her execution. Is it so easy–that my mother is no longer in this world? Did I not have any right to see her before her execution?” said a distraught Banafesheh Nayebpour.

Iranian-Dutch citizen, Zahra Bahrami, who was arrested a few days after the 2009 Ashura Day (27 December 2009) protests on charges of participating in street gatherings, was accused of drug trafficking sometime later and sentenced to death. During her court trial, Ms. Bahrami said that the confessions she had made in prison had been extracted under duress and by force. She retracted her confessions in court. An informed source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that during Zahra Bahrami’s detention, her interrogation team was the Iranian Intelligence Ministry’s Anti-Espionage Team. According to the said source, during her first few weeks of detention in prison, Zahra Bahrami endured severe physical and psychological torture. She told her daughter several times that she had been made to give fake confessions under torture.

During an interview earlier this month, Zahra Bahrami’s daughter told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran: “My mother is a citizen of the Netherlands. They probably leveled this accusation against her in order to cut the Dutch government’s reach [into the case]. They have previously waged such unfounded charges against others, too. But my mother is a lonely woman without anyone, so they think they can do this to her. They know she has no one to help her.”