The woman who killed her alleged rapist has been executed in Iran

The Iranian woman charged with the murder of man who allegedly attempted to rape her has been executed, according to her mother.

Reyhaneh Jabbari, 26, was arrested in 2007 for the killing of Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, a former employee of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence who she said tried to sexually abuse her.

She was first sentenced to death by a Tehran court in 2009 and her execution verdict was upheld by Iran’s Supreme Court. Ms Jabbari's case drew international outcry and sparked a petition urging her release, which gained hundreds of thousands of signatures and her execution was postponed several times.

Despite the campaign, Mabbari's mother Shole Pakravan told BBC Persia that she was hanged in a Tehran prison on Saturday.

This morning Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa Programme, said the news was "deeply disappointing in the extreme."

This is another bloody stain on Iran’s human rights record. Tragically, this case is far from uncommon. Once again Iran has insisted on applying the death penalty despite serious concerns over the fairness of the trial.

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