One day after a warning by Amnesty International, Iran has executed Zeinab Sekaanvand, a woman who was convicted for the murder of her husband at age 17.
Zeinab had married her husband at age 15, but Amnesty urged Iran not to carry out the death sentence also because “she was subjected to a grossly unfair legal process”.
Regardless of the call by Amnesty and human rights activists, the death sentence was carried out in the northwestern city of Urmiya in the morning of October 2. She was 24 years old.
According to religious law, Iran considers girls as young as nine criminally liable and the age for boys is 15, based on a notion of when children reach puberty.
The reason Zeinab is said to have killed her husband was marital rape.
Amnesty International in its plea to Iran had said, ““She did not see a lawyer until her final trial session in 2014, when she retracted ‘confessions’ she had made when she had no access to legal representation. She also says that, following her arrest, she was tortured by male police officers through beatings all over her body.”