Author:
Publication: Iran Focus
Date: January 7, 2006
URL: http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5184
An Iranian court has sentenced a teenage rape
victim to death by hanging after she weepingly confessed that she had unintentionally
killed a man who had tried to rape both her and her niece.
The state-run daily Etemaad reported on Saturday
that 18-year-old Nazanin confessed to stabbing one of three men who had attacked
the pair along with their boyfriends while they were spending some time in
a park west of the Iranian capital in March 2005.
Nazanin, who was 17 years old at the time
of the incident, said that after the three men started to throw stones at
them, the two girls' boyfriends quickly escaped on their motorbikes leaving
the pair helpless.
She described how the three men pushed her
and her 16-year-old niece Somayeh onto the ground and tried to rape them,
and said that she took out a knife from her pocket and stabbed one of the
men in the hand.
As the girls tried to escape, the men once
again attacked them, and at this point, Nazanin said, she stabbed one of the
men in the chest. The teenage girl, however, broke down in tears in court
as she explained that she had no intention of killing the man but was merely
defending herself and her younger niece from rape, the report said.
The court, however, issued on Tuesday a sentence
for Nazanin to be hanged to death.
Last week, a court in the city of Rasht, northern
Iran, sentenced Delara Darabi to death by hanging charged with murder when
she was 17 years old. Darabi has denied the charges.
In August 2004, Iran's Islamic penal system
sentenced a 16-year-old girl, Atefeh Rajabi, to death after a sham trial,
in which she was accused of committing "acts incompatible with chastity".
The teenage victim had no access to a lawyer
at any stage and efforts by her family to retain one were to no avail. Atefeh
personally defended herself and told the religious judge that he should punish
those who force women into adultery, not the victims. She was eventually hanged
in public in the northern town of Neka.
