IRAN. WOMAN SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR KILLING HUSBAND

Iran's Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for a 35-year-old woman, Fatemeh Haghighatpajouh who killed her husband, Bahman, after he raped her 15-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. Only the intervention of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyeed Ali Khamenei can now save Haghighatpajouh from execution by hanging.
A letter from Haghighatpajouh's daughter to Iran's judicial authorities obtained a reprieve for her mother while the case was referred to the Supreme Court. A lower court had granted Bahman's family its request that Haghighatpajouh be sentenced to death by hanging as retribution for his murder - as Iranian criminal law allows.
Haghighatpajouh killed Bahman in 2002. Her second husband, and a drug addict and gambler, he had returned home one evening telling Haghighatpajouh that he had lost a bet and had sold his 15-year-old stepdaughter, the oldest of Haghighatpajouh's two daughters, to pay his debts.
When Haghighatpajouh refused to agree, Bahman raped the girl. Incensed by this, Haghighatpajouh strangled him with her chador (headscarf). She then cut up his corpse and threw the body parts into the rubbish.