An Iranian child bride who was forced to marry at 15 has been hanged in Iran for murdering her husband who had abused her for years.
The victim, Samira Sabzian, 29, who had been in prison for the past decade, was executed at dawn in Ghezel Hesar prison in the Tehran city of Karaj, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights Group (IHR) said.
Sabzian was forced to marry her husband when she was just 15. During the marriage, the girl became the victim of domestic violence, her relatives said.
After four years of abuse, the mother-of-two murdered her husband in 2013 when she was 19 years old and was sent to prison where she remained for ten years.
Today, Sabzian was executed by the Iranian regime despite pleas from Britain, the UN, and international human rights to spare the child bride.
During her detention, Sabzian had refused to meet her two children in prison as one was a newborn when she was arrested. But she later met her two children for the first time in ten years in an emotional reunion after finding out she would be executed within days.
Sabzian was hanged at dawn today, with rights groups criticising Iran’s sharia-based murder laws which are based on a principle of ‘qesas’ (retribution in kind).
According to the penal code of Iran, those accused of murder are sentenced to death – regardless of the circumstances surrounding the crime.
The victim’s family can choose whether to accept the death penalty or ask for financial compensation. But in Sabzian’s case, her husband’s parents asked for the death penalty.
The director of IHR, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, said: ‘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.
‘A regime that has sustained itself solely through killing and instilling fear. Ali Khamenei and other leaders of the Islamic Republic must be held accountable for this crime.’
Amnesty International said it was ‘horrified’ by the reports of the ‘chilling execution’, saying the mother of two was ‘subjected to a forced and early marriage as a child’.
