Iranian woman Reyhaneh Jabbari at imminent danger of execution

Death Penalty News

Unofficial reports from Iran indicate that the death sentence of the 26 year old Iranian woman Reyhaneh Jabbari can be carried out on Tuesday April 15.

Reyhaneh Jabbari, aged 26, was arrested in 2007 for the murder of Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, a former employee of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence. Following her arrest, Reyhaneh Jabbari was held in solitary confinement for two months in Tehran’s Evin Prison, where she did not have access to a lawyer or her family. Reyhaneh confessed that to the murder immediately after her arrest, though she did not have a lawyer present at the time she made her confession. She stated that the murder took place in self-defence.

Reyhaneh Jabbari was sentenced to death under qesas (“retribution-in-kind”) by a criminal court in Tehran in 2009. The death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court the same year. Her family was told in March 2014 that the sentence had gone for implementation and unofficial reports indicate that she might be executed on Tuesday.

IHR urges the international community to act immediately in order to stop the execution of Reyhaneh. Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the spokesperson of IHR, said: ” International reactions may be the only possibility to save Reyhaneh. We ask all the countries with diplomatic relations with Iran to use all their channels to stop Reyhaneh’s planned execution”.

According to IHR’s annual report on the death penalty at least 687 people were executed in 2013, the highest number in more than 15 years in Iran. So far in 2014 at least 170 people have been executed, 96 being announced by the official reports.