Public execution for spurned lover who murdered woman

Iran has executed a man in public for killing a woman who turned down his offer of marriage, hanging him at the scene of the crime.

A young man, identified only by his first name, Kousha, stabbed his university mate to death in front of witnesses on 6 July, media reported.

“I fell in love with Mahsa when I saw her for the first time. I asked her to marry me, but she turned my proposal down,” the Sharq newspaper quoted Kousha as saying during his trial.

“When I found out she might leave the country after graduation, I took my knives and stabbed her,” he said.

The Fars news agency said “many people were at the scene to see the implementation of justice”.

The execution took place in Saadat Abad, an affluent Tehran district, early yesterday morning.

Murder, rape, adultery, armed robbery, apostasy and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Sharia law, imposed in Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.