The case of Samira Sabzian didn’t end well. The child bride from Iran was married at 15 and then jailed at 19 after murdering her abusive husband. She was in prison for 10 years and was executed yesterday, age 29, in the Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj, said the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group. She was executed by hanging.
“Samira was a victim of years of gender apartheid, child marriage and domestic violence, and today she fell victim to the incompetent and corrupt regime’s killing machine,” IHR director Mahmood-Amiry Moghaddam said.
During her detention Sabzian was denied meeting her children according to Iranian activists, one who shared her jail cell. And this was a source of great suffering to her.
Sabzian was hanged at dawn yesterday based on Iran’s sharia murder laws that come from a principle of ‘qesas’ (retribution in kind).
Human rights groups say the laws don’t take domestic violence into consideration. The victim’s family, however, can choose whether to accept the death penalty or ask for financial compensation. Sabzian’s husband’s parents asked for the death penalty.
According to IHR,18 women have been executed this year including Samira Sabzian. The rights groups says there is a surge in executions in Iran that put 115 people put to death in November alone. Amnesty International said Iran is authoring a “horrific state-sanctioned killing spree”.
Iran is a notorious killer of human rights. You can go to jail for dancing on social media in Iran. You can lose your life if you uncover your hair.
Following the 1979 revolution, Islamic sharia law came into effect and the hijab, or full body covering, became a compulsory dress code for women in Iran. Since then, women have been required to wear the hijab, or face harassment and legal consequences from the morality police. Iran is also using face ID technology to catch women “criminals”.
Women who don’t comply might also be “disappeared” and whisked away into vans. This is what has happened in the past to well-known bloggers Green Prophet has interviewed like Hossein Derakhshan and to Faranak Farid who was beaten and tortured for trying to protect a disappearing salt lake, Lake Orumieh.
