A child bride in Iran who killed the man she was forced to marry when she was only 15 is among three women executed for murdering their husbands this week.
Soheila Abadi, now 25, was hanged in prison after she was convicted of killing her husband over ‘family disputes’ according to the sentencing courts.
Two other women executed on Wednesday were also convicted of murdering their husbands, Human Rights Watch said.
Activists claim that most incidents of wives killing their husbands are sparked by domestic violence but the Iranian courts do not take this into account.
The trio are among 32 people hanged in the country in just the past week.
It comes amid a surge in executions across the country, with at least 251 people killed by the state killed in the first six months of the year, Amnesty International reported.
The figure is more than double the number executed over the same period last year.
The charity accused Iran of carrying out a ‘horrific spree’ of executions, with many of those sentenced to death not having had a fair trial.
Of the 251 executed, 146 of them were for murder, and at least 86 were for drug offences which should not warrant the death penalty under international law.
Diana Eltahawy, deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said: ‘The state machinery is carrying out killings on a mass scale across the country in an abhorrent assault on the right to life.