TEHRAN: Iran hanged on Saturday a woman convicted of murdering a former intelligence officer she claimed had tried to sexually assault her, defying international appeals for a stay of execution.

Reyhaneh Jabbari, 26, who had been on death row for five years, was put to death at dawn, the official IRNA news agency quoted the Tehran prosecutor’s office as saying.

Amnesty International condemned her killing, describing it as “a bloody stain on Iran’s human rights record” and “an affront to justice”.

A message posted on the homepage of a Facebook campaign set up to try to save Jabbari noted the “sad news” of her death, adding the words “Rest in Peace” alongside pictures of her as a young child.

Jabbari, an interior designer, was executed for the 2007 stabbing of Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi. Iranian actors and other prominent figures had campaigned for clemency on her behalf, echoing similar calls in the West.

Iran’s judiciary had given several deadlines for Sarbandi’s family to spare Jabbari under an Islamic sharia law provision that allows a death sentence for murder to be commuted to jail time with the agreement of the victim’s family.

But relatives of Sarbandi, a 47-year-old surgeon who earlier worked for the intelligence ministry, refused the pleas to spare Jabbari’s life, demanding, according to Iranian media, that she tell “the truth”.

A UN human rights monitor said the killing came in self-defence after Sarbandi tried to sexually abuse Jabbari, and that the condemned woman’s trial in 2009 had been deeply flawed. But a medical report, prepared for the judiciary and quoted by IRNA in its Saturday dispatch, said Sarbandi was stabbed in the back and that the killing had been premeditated.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2014