An Iranian woman died of a heart attack while waiting to be executed – but her body was still hanged so that her victim’s mother could watch, her lawyer said.
Zahra Ismaili awaited her turn on the gallows last Wednesday for murdering her husband, a senior intelligence ministry agent she had accused of abuse, according to The Times of London.
She fell dead after seeing 16 men hanged for her, according to a report from her lawyer, Omid Moradi, shared by the British newspaper and the Iran Human Rights Monitor (HRM).
“Zahra’s heart stopped and she died before being taken to the gallows,” Moradi reportedly wrote, saying the official cause of death was listed as “cardiac arrest.”
“They hanged her lifeless body, and the victim’s mother, Fatemeh Asal-Mahi, personally kicked the crutch out from under her feet so that she could even see her daughter-in-law’s corpse on the gallows for a few seconds,” he wrote in the since-deleted mail, according to the outlets.
The body was hanged at dawn in Rajai Shahr Prison, a notoriously harsh prison in Karaj, a suburb of the capital, Tehran, the outlets said.
Moradi had insisted that Ismaili was acting in self-defense to save herself and her children when she killed her husband, Alireza Zamani, according to the UK Times.
The Islamic Republic has imposed many death sentences in recent weeks, but executing 17 people together is extreme, even by Iran’s standards, the British newspaper said.
Ismaili is one of three women murdered last week, resulting in 114 women being executed under Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s tenure, which began in 2013, according to Iranian HRM.