“A court in Marivan has condemned Zhila to death by stoning and the family, which is very fundamental, has agreed”, confirmed Ms. Nahid Riazi of a Copenhagen-based human rights group that fights to the rights of women, adding that the young girl had been separated from her new born baby after the birth.

Ms. Rajabi was publicly hanged on a street in the city centre of Neka in the northern province of Mazandaran, on 15 August, for "acts incompatible with chastity".

Faced with domestic and international outcry of dismay, the authorities said the young girl was “mentally incompetent”.

However, informed sources revealed that Ms. Ateqeh was sentenced to death after, during the "trial", she expressed outrage at the misogyny and injustice in the Islamic Republic and its Islam-based judicial system.

“The lower court judge was so incensed by her protestations that he personally put the noose around her neck after his decision had been upheld by the Supreme Court”, the sources reported.

The execution of Ateqeh Rajabi was the tenth execution of a child offender in Islamic Republic recorded by Amnesty International since 1990.

Amnesty International is alarmed that this execution was carried out despite reports that Ateqeh Rajabi was not believed to be mentally competent, and that she reportedly did not have access to a lawyer at any stage.

As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Iran is bound not to execute child offenders. Both treaties provide that capital punishment shall not be imposed for offences committed by persons under 18 year of age at the time of committing the offence.