Afsaneh Nowrouzi, a 34 year old woman who spent seven years on death row in Iran

Afsaneh Nowrouzi, a 34 year old woman who spent seven years on death row in Iran, was spared execution by the family of the police chief she stabbed to death and sexually mutilated for trying to rape her. Following mediation by the judiciary, the family of Behzad Moghaddam agreed to accept compensation of $62,500 instead of Nowrouzi's execution.
"With the efforts of judiciary officials, family members of the victim were persuaded to give up retribution in this case and signed in a notary public office not to demand death for Nowrouzi in exchange for blood money," said Mohsen Yektan-Khodaei, a top provincial judiciary official.
In 1997, Nowrouzi killed Moghaddam, the police chief on Kish island in the Persian Gulf. Her lawyer said she also cut off his penis and placed it on his chest. The court rejected her self-defence claim, convicting her of murder and sentencing her to death.
She had been held in a prison in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas ever since.
The case highlighted how difficult it could be for Iranian women to obtain justice against rapists. Unless a woman had very strong evidence, it was very difficult to prove she was raped, and sometimes she ended up being charged with adultery or illicit sex, which carry the death penalty -- usually hanging or stoning.
Iran's Supreme Court initially upheld Nowrouzi's death sentence, but in 2004, under intense international pressure, judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi ordered a stay of the verdict.
The Supreme Court took a second look at the case and overturned the death sentence due to "technical deficiencies."
It ordered a new ruling from the Kish court. As the court was readdressing the case, judiciary officials intervened with Moghaddam's family. Yektan-Khodaei, the provincial official, said they urged Moghaddam's mother and his two children to show mercy to Nowrouzi, a mother of two.
But Nowrouzi's lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, said his client never sought mercy because she believed she had justly defended herself. "The victim's family members did a good thing signing documents not calling for Nowrouzi's death despite my client's refusal to request mercy," he said.
Women's activist and lawyer Sara Irani praised the resolution of the case.
"The execution of Nowrouzi would have forced women to give in to humiliation and not defend themselves. It would mean women are condemned to death whether they kill the rapist or give in to sex," she said. "Nowrouzi's freedom will give new breath to women to find the courage to stand up for their rights and defend themselves," Irani said.