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Iran executes Kurdish teenage rape victim Zeinab Sekaanvand: Amnesty

Iran executes Kurdish teenage rape victim Zeinab Sekaanvand, October 2, 2018. Photo: SM

LONDON,— Iran on Tuesday executed a Kurdish teenage rape victim who was abused by her husband and convicted of killing him in a “grossly unfair trial”, Amnesty International said Tuesday.

An ethnic Kurd, Zeinab Sekaanvand was 15 when she married her husband. She was jailed two years later, while still legally a juvenile, for stabbing him to death.

She later retracted her confession, saying it had been extracted under duress.

Sekaanvand, who also accused her brother-in-law of raping her several times, was 24 when she was executed, Amnesty said.

“Her execution is profoundly unjust and shows the Iranian authorities’ contempt for the right of children to life,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“The fact that her death sentence followed a grossly unfair trial makes her execution even more outrageous.”

Presented with a state-appointed defence lawyer at only her final trial session, Sekaanvand retracted her earlier confession, which she said was coerced from her under torture by the police, according to Amnesty.

She said her husband was actually killed by her brother-in-law — the same man who raped her.

She said the brother-in-law told her that if she accepted responsibility, he would pardon her, which is permitted under Islamic law.

Amnesty said the court had failed to investigate her statements, relying on her original confession made in 2012 at a police station in which she was tortured for 20 days.

Ever since its emergence in 1979 the Islamic regime imposed discriminatory rules and laws against the Kurds in all social, political and economic fields.

Iran’s Kurdish minority live mainly in the west and north-west of the country. They experience discrimination in the enjoyment of their religious, economic and cultural rights.

Parents are banned from registering their babies with certain Kurdish names, and religious minorities that are mainly or partially Kurdish are targeted by measures designed to stigmatize and isolate them.

Kurds are also discriminated against in their access to employment, adequate housing and political rights, and so suffer entrenched poverty, which has further marginalized them.

Kurdish human rights defenders, community activists, and journalists often face arbitrary arrest and prosecution. Others – including some political activists – suffer torture, grossly unfair trials before Revolutionary Courts and, in some cases, the death penalty.

Kurdish armed groups, such as PJAK, Komala and KDPI have been in conflict with the Iranian government for decades, and are seeking greater autonomy in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat). These armed Kurdish groups are widely spread across the 60-kilometer border with neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan region.

Estimate to over 12 million Kurds live in Iranian Kurdistan.