In brief: U.N., others decry woman’s hanging
TEHRAN, Iran – Iran hanged a woman Saturday who was convicted of murdering a man she alleged was trying to rape her, drawing swift international condemnation for a prosecution several countries described as flawed.
Reyhaneh Jabbari was hanged at dawn for premeditated murder, the official IRNA news agency reported. It quoted a statement issued Saturday by the Tehran Prosecutor Office that rejected the claim of attempted rape and said that all evidence proved that Jabbari had plotted to kill Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, a former intelligence agent.
The United Nations as well as Amnesty International and other human rights groups had called on Iran’s judiciary to halt the execution, which was carried out after the country’s Supreme Court upheld the verdict. The victim’s family could have saved Jabbari’s life by accepting blood money, but they refused to do so.
Egyptian leader responds to attack
CAIRO – Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi vowed Saturday to punish those responsible for attacks that killed 31 soldiers in the restive Sinai peninsula.
Friday’s assault, which targeted a military checkpoint and then the troops who responded to the initial strike, was the Egyptian military’s largest one-day loss of life in decades.
No group has claimed responsibility, but the operation’s sophistication bore the hallmarks of Ansar Bayd al-Maqdis, or Partisans of Jerusalem, which has staged a number of lethal attacks on Egyptian security forces in the Sinai and elsewhere.
Italians protest lay-off proposal
ROME – Hundreds of thousands of people marched Saturday in Rome to protest Premier Matteo Renzi’s drive to make it easier to fire workers.
Two noisy marches crisscrossed the heart of the Italian capital, snarling traffic for hours. Demonstrators cheered as CGIL labor confederation leader Susanna Camusso promised more protests and strikes unless Renzi abandons efforts to give employers more leeway to fire workers.
The center-left premier contends businesses fear hiring workers they cannot dismiss in case business sours, because current legislation makes it very hard to lay off employees. Renzi is confident the measure would help heal Italy’s recession-mired economy.