“On 14 January 2006, judges in a Tehran criminal court cleared Nazanin Fatehi of pre-meditated murder following a trial session held on 10 January, but ordered her to pay diyeh (blood money) to the family of the man she killed in self-defence in March 2005. She had been sentenced to death for murdering a man who tried to rape her in January 2006, but following international protests, including by a Canadian-Iranian beauty queen Nazanin Afshin-Jam, her death sentence was quashed by the Supreme Court in May 2006 and her case sent for retrial.” –Amnesty International
Today Nazanin Fatehi was set free thanks to the web donations that were raised to help pay her “blood money”.
SOS Iran and Help Nazanin are reporting this good news tonight:
Nazanin had a very emotional reunion with her family members. She could not believe that this day had arrived. She cried in her mothers arms and took turns embracing her siblings and father.
After she finished greeting her family, Nazanin’s lawyer Mr. Mostafaei said that she told him that she now wants to go to school and study hard to get her life back. Soon after, Mr. Mostafaei got a phone call from some of Nazanin’s inmates saying that they missed her already.
Nazanin’s family was forced to pay $50,000 in order to secure her release from prison:
Fatehi was reunited with her family in Tehran a few days after posting bail of just over $50,000.
Vancouver’s Nazanin Afshin-Jam, a pop singer and former beauty queen, had turned the case into a global cause, appearing on CTV’s Canada AM among other media outlets, to campaign to save the woman who shared her first name. Most of the cash was raised by Afshin-Jam’s website.
Fatehi had been sentenced to death for murder after she stabbed, in self-defence, one of three men who attempted to rape her and her 15-year-old niece in a park outside Tehran in 2005. Last year she received a new trial. In January, a five-judge panel unanimously overturned the charge.
Fatehi had been sentenced to death in an Iranian court a year ago, after admitting to stabbing to death one of three men who tried to rape her and a 16-year-old relative. Fatehi was 17 at the time.
It was a successful web campaign that helped secure her release! According to The Register, donors at the Help Nazanin site collected “$31,000 USD in online donations, $1,000 in cheques and $1,000 in Iran” to help pay her “blood money”.
