Wed. is 'Gallows DaY" in Baghdad: Woman's plea from death row:

I photograph at the cnn site is heardbreaking.


Woman's plea from death row: I'm innocent
POSTED: 11:20 a.m. EDT, May 9, 2007
Story Highlights
• Iraqi woman sentenced to hang in killings of 3 relatives
• Woman says she was tortured into confessing a role in the slayings
• New Amnesty International study says many "confessions" are being coerced
• Amnesty, another group are working to commute death sentences of 4 women
By Arwa Damon
CNN

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Sitting on Iraq's death row is a 25-year-old woman convicted in the slayings of three relatives. She says her husband carried out the killings and fled. She confessed to being an accomplice, she says, only after being tortured in police custody.

Despite lingering questions about the case, the fate of Samar Saed Abdullah remains the gallows.

"I am innocent," she told CNN from inside the al-Kadhimiya Women's Prison in Baghdad. "The judge did not hear me out. He refused to hear anything I have to say. He just sentenced me." (Watch Abdullah cry as she tells her story Video)

According to Amnesty International, such claims are not uncommon in Iraq, which has the fourth-highest execution rate in the world.

Amnesty issued a report last month that concluded sentences in Iraq increasingly follow flawed trials and coerced confessions.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/08/iraq.deathpenalty/index.html?section=cnn_topstories&eref=yahoo