A 26-year-old Iranian woman has had her execution postponed by authorities, however it is unsure how long for. Reyhaneh Jabbari was 19 when she started working for Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi as an interior designer. However, after he sexually assaulted her, Reyhaneh stuck a knife into his shoulder to fend him off, and he later died from the wound bleeding out.
Reyhaneh, though acting in self-defence, was sentenced to death and has been in prison for the seven years since the incident. Various charities and the UN have claimed that Reyhaneh’s confession was false, obtained under pressure and threats. And Amnesty International has warned that the reason Reyhaneh is in prison and facing such a severe penalty for defending herself against her attackers is potentially because Sarbandi also happened to be a former employee of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
‘Sarbandi's association with the Ministry of Intelligence may have affected the impartiality of the court's investigation,’ reads Amnesty’s statement, according to CNN. And though Reyhaneh hasn’t yet been executed, it is up to authorities if and when she will be hanged to death.
According to the UN, Iran has executed 170 people this year, and last year, the country – under the new regime of Hassan Rouhani – executed more people than any other country in the world, apart from China, which has a population of one billion (now compare that to Iran’s 81 million). Pretty bleak.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.