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Iran Focus
 Tehran, Iran, Jan. 07 – 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.
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