Iran's Supreme Court revoked a death sentence against...

Iran's Supreme Court revoked a death sentence against Afsaneh Norouzi, a woman who killed an intelligence officer she says tried to rape her, her lawyer said. Afsaneh had been sentenced to death in 2001 and had been in jail since 1997. The mother of three said she stabbed the man when he tried to assault her on the resort island of Kish in the Gulf.
"The Supreme Court has quashed the death sentence against Afsaneh Norouzi for some deficiencies in the case," Norouzi's lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, said.
He said the case would be sent back to a lower court in Kish, where her conviction was upheld after appeal in 2003, for a new sentence to be issued.
Judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi ordered a fresh investigation after the second ruling.
Khorramshahi was optimistic about Norouzi's fate. "I welcome the ruling and see it as opening the way to accept what Afsaneh says: that she acted in legitimate self-defence," he said.
A group of reformist lawmakers in Iran's last parliament wrote to the head of the hard-line judiciary in 2003, calling on him to order a retrial to save the life of the woman, who was in her early thirties.
They argued her execution would make women afraid to defend themselves against sexual assaults.