Zeinab\u00b4s case<\/strong><\/p>\nZeinab Sekaanvand Lokran comes from a poor, conservative Iranian-Kurdish family, and ran away from home to marry Hossein Sarmadi in the hope for a better life.<\/p>\n
She was 17 when her husband died. Zeinab was arrested and \u201cconfessed\u201d that she killed her husband after he\u2019d abused her for months and refused her requests for divorce.<\/p>\n
She was then held at the police station for the next 20 days and repeatedly tortured by police officers.<\/p>\n
After a grossly unfair trial, in which she was denied access to a lawyer during her entire pre-trial detention, Zeinab was sentenced to death by hanging.<\/p>\n
Execution delayed during pregnancy<\/h2>\n
In 2015 Zeinab married a fellow prisoner in Oroumieh Central Prison and became pregnant.<\/p>\n
Her execution was delayed while Zeinab was expecting. Last month she gave birth to a stillborn baby, and is now at imminent risk of execution.<\/p>\n
Doctors said her baby died in her womb two days earlier due to shock, around the same time her cell mate and friend was executed on 28 September. She was returned from hospital to the prison the very next day \u2013 denied any postnatal support or care since.<\/p>\n
Raped by her brother-in-law<\/h2>\n
Zainab only met her state-appointed lawyer for the first time at her final trial session. It was then that she retracted confessions made when she\u2019d had no access to a lawyer.<\/p>\n
She told the court that her husband\u2019s brother, who she said had raped her several times, was responsible for the murder and had coerced her into confessing, promising he would pardon her (under Islamic law, murder victims\u2019 relatives have the power to pardon the offender and accept financial compensation instead).<\/p>\n
This statement was ignored by the court, which instead relied heavily on her old \u201cconfessions\u201d to reach its verdict.<\/p>\n
A child at the time of the crime<\/h2>\n
Zainab was just 17 at the time of the crime she is accused of. The courts completely failed to apply juvenile sentencing from Iran\u2019s Islamic penal code in her case.<\/p>\n
They also failed to tell her that she could submit an application for retrial. Iran\u2019s penal code falls woefully short of what\u2019s required for juvenile offenders under international human rights law, and even the limited safeguards that do exist are not adhered to by the authorities.<\/p>\n
The use of the death penalty for crimes committed by people under 18 is also completely prohibited under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Iran has signed up to.<\/p>\n
Stop Zeinab\u2019s execution now<\/h2>\n
Please urge the Iranian authorities to halt Zeinab\u2019s execution and throw out her death sentence. She must be granted a fair retrial in accordance with juvenile justice principles.<\/p>\n
There must be a prompt, independent, and thorough investigation into her allegations of torture.<\/p>\n
The authorities have to ensure that any statements obtained from her under torture or without a lawyer present are not used as evidence against her in court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stop Zeinab\u2019s execution now! Amnesty International UK – Zeinab was 15 when she left her family to marry Hossein. She thought the marriage was her only chance to escape poverty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[55,276,277],"class_list":["post-960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-execution","tag-zeinab","tag-zeinab-sekaanvand-lokran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":961,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions\/961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Stop Zeinab\u2019s execution now!<\/h2>\n