Sunday, May 27, 2007

Injustice in Iran

Nazanin (Mahabad) Fatehi is a 19-year-old Iranian girl who was sentenced to death for stabbing a man who tried to rape her and her 15 year old niece (Nazanin was 17 at the time). Nazanin and her 15 year old niece (Sumayeh) were in a park in Karaj, west of Tehran when three men started harassing them. The men pushed Nazanin and her niece down on the ground and tried to rape them, and to protect herself, she took out a knife from her pocket and stabbed one of the men in the hand. According to Nazanin, the girls tried to escape, but the men overtook them, and at this point Nazanin stabbed one of the other men in the chest, which eventually killed him.
On January 3, 2006, she was sentenced to death for murder by a criminal court of the Islamic Republic of Iran. At the end of May, the Iranian head of Judiciary overturned her death sentence, and sent the case back to a lower court. Nazanin's re-trial ended on Jan 10, 2007.
In this new trial, Nazanin was exonerated on the charge of murder, but sentenced to pay blood money. Nazanin's lawyers appealed this sentence, but paid bail (collected by donations) so Nazanin could be released from prison. Thankfully, Nazanin was released from prison and reunited with her family Wednesday, January 31, 2007.

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