Iran to hang young woman for teenage crime

Iran Focus:

Tehran, Iran, Aug. 11 – Iran’s clergy-dominated Supreme Court upheld a death by hanging sentence for a young woman accused of killing a man as a teenager, a state-owned daily reported on Thursday.

The young woman, only identified by her first name Fakhteh, will be hanged in the coming days, according to a judiciary spokesman.Fakhteh was accused of murdering a man in December 2001 and then fleeing the scene, according to the daily Sharq.

The young woman professed her innocence throughout the proceedings and appealed the original verdict that was handed down by Judge Mohammad-Sultan Hemmatyar.

Elsewhere, an Iranian man accused of fatally shooting a member of Iran’s paramilitary State Security Forces was hanged in the Iranian capital in the early hours of Wednesday, the state-owned daily Iran reported on Thursday.

Iran’s official media have reported that at least 18 people have been executed and a further seven have been sentenced to death in the country since the election of the new hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.