On death row in Bush's Iraq - But this woman says: I’m innocent

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http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/features/womanofthesun/2007/may/15/womanofthesun-15-05-2007-001.htm

On death row
• But this woman says: I’m innocent
By Arwa Damon, CNN
Tuesday, May 15, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq: 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, 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."

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.