It was 7am when Delara Darabi phoned home. "Oh mother, I see the hangman's noose in front of me," she garbled. "They are going to execute me. Please save me." Moments later a prison official snatched the handset away. "We will easily execute your daughter and there's nothing you can do about it," he barked at the parents. Then, with a chilling click, the line went dead.
The desperate couple rushed to the Central Prison in Rasht, Iran, wailing at the guards to let them see their 22-year-old. As they prostrated themselves, an ambulance emerged, most probably with Delara's corpse inside.
"They took Delara to the gallows with nobody around her," Mohammad Mostafaei, one of her lawyers, said in a letter distributed to human rights groups. "They put the rope on her delicate neck. I do not know who the cruel person was to pull the chair from under her feet." ..... Read Delara's story
