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Iranian Woman Hanged After Killing Her Alleged Rapist Has One Last Wish
In this picture taken on Dec. 15, 2008, Iranian Reyhaneh Jabbari, center, sits while attending her trial in a court in Tehran, Iran. Jabbari was hanged on Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014, after being convicted of murdering a man she said was trying to rape her, the official IRNA news agency reported. (AP Photo/Golara Sajjadian)

Iranian Woman Hanged After Killing Her Alleged Rapist Has One Last Wish

"Death is not the end of life."

Reyhaneh Jabbari was hanged this weekend in Iran despite international appeals for a re-trial, and shortly after her death was announced, a voice mail revealing her last wish was released.

In a message to her mother, considered to be Jabbari's will, Jabbari said she wants to donate her organs (translation via the National Council of Resistance of Iran):

My kind mother ... the one more dear to me than my life, I don't want to rot under the soil. I don't want my eye or my young heart to turn into dust. Beg so that it is arranged that as soon as I am hanged my heart, kidney, eye, bones and anything that can be transplanted, be taken away from my body and given to someone who needs them as a gift.

I don't want the recipient know my name, buy me a bouquet, or even pray for me. I am telling you from the bottom of my heart that I don't want to have a grave for you to come and mourn there and suffer. I don't want you to wear black clothing for me. Do your best to forget my difficult days. Give me to the wind to take away.

In this picture taken on Dec. 15, 2008, Iranian Reyhaneh Jabbari, center, sits while attending her trial in a court in Tehran, Iran. Jabbari was hanged on Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014, after being convicted of murdering a man she said was trying to rape her, the official IRNA news agency reported. (AP Photo/Golara Sajjadian) In this picture taken on Dec. 15, 2008, Iranian Reyhaneh Jabbari, center, sits while attending her trial in a court in Tehran, Iran. Jabbari was hanged on Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014, after being convicted of murdering a man she said was trying to rape her, the official IRNA news agency reported. (AP Photo/Golara Sajjadian)

The 26-year-old woman admitted to killing a man nearly twice her age in 2007, but she consistently said it was because the man, Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, tried to rape her.

But after an investigation that Amnesty International called "deeply flawed," the courts determined that the murder was premeditated and executed the woman on Saturday.

"The world allowed me to live for 19 years. That ominous night it was I that should have been killed," Jabbari's final message to her mother said. "My body would have been thrown in some corner of the city, and after a few days, the police would have taken you to the coroner’s office to identify my body and there you would also learn that I had been raped as well. The murderer would have never been found since we don’t have their wealth and their power. Then you would have continued your life suffering and ashamed, and a few years later you would have died of this suffering and that would have been that."

"However, with that cursed blow the story changed," she continued. "My body was not thrown aside, but into the grave of Evin Prison and its solitary wards, and now the grave-like prison of Shahr-e Ray. But give in to the fate and don’t complain. You know better that death is not the end of life."

Evin Prison is one of the most feared institutions in Iran. Countless have been raped before they were released or sent to be executed.

“This is another bloody stain on Iran’s human rights record,” Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa regions said in a statement. “Tragically, this case is far from uncommon. Once again Iran has insisted on applying the death penalty despite serious concerns over the fairness of the trial.”

More on Reyhaneh Jabbari's story here.

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