Vancouver (Canada), April 8 (AFP): A Canadian beauty queen, Nazanin Afshin-Jam, has launched a campaign to save the life of an Iranian teenager who has been sentenced to death for the murder of a man who tried to rape her.

The petition, addressed to the UN and Iran, asks that the death sentence of a young woman, also called Nazanin, be commuted.

Amnesty International has said that the woman was 17 when she “reportedly admitted stabbing to death one of three men who tried to rape her and her 16-year-old niece in a Karaj on March 2005.” Now 18, Nazanin was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by hanging.

Amnesty says they have been unable to contact her family or lawyers. “It is a horrific story, and her name being Nazanin shocked me,” said Nazanin Afshin-Jam, who came as a baby with her refugee family to Vancouver, fleeing Iran’s revolution.

“I could have been in the same situation”, she said, “but I am lucky I live in a country (Canada) that knows what justice is about.”