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Iranian woman to hang
07/01/2006 13:24 - (SA)
Tehran - An 18-year-old Iranian woman has been sentenced to death for killing the man she says tried to rape her.
Iran's Etemad newpaper reports that the woman, identified as Nazanin, claimed self defence after she had stabbed a man to death in March 2005.
Nazanin, 17 at the time, had been out with her niece and their boyfriends in Tehran when two men started harassing them. She said the men tried to rape them after their boyfriends had run away.
Nazanin told the newspaper: "I committed murder to defend myself and my niece, I did not mean to kill him. I did not know what to do because nobody came to help us."
The European Union and international human rights groups have been pressuring Iran to stop executing convicted minors.
The United Nations general assembly has adopted a non-binding resolution denouncing the practice.
Iran's judiciary says minors are not executed in the republic. It has also proposed a law prohibiting the death penalty or flagellation for those who were minors at the time of the crimes.
In Iranian law, a boy can be executed from the age of 15, and a girl from the age of nine. However, the execution is carried out when the offender is over 18 years old.
The Iranian press reported a disabled man had been executed in public on Friday.
At least 81 people were executed in Iran last year. Amnesty International reports at least 159 people were executed in Iran in 2004.
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