Y Net News: Iran executes Jewish woman

Human rights agency claims Israel-born Adiva Soleyman Kalimia executed at Iranian prison on alleged counts of adultery last March

An Israel-born Jewish woman of Iranian descent and her Armenian Christian husband were executed in Iran over two months ago, an Iranian human rights group reported last Thursday. 

The Human Rights Activists News Agency claimed Adiva Mirza Soleyman Kalimia and her husband Varjan Petrosian were hung on March 14 at Evin Prison, known for its political prisoners' wing, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

The human rights group quoted the Iranian court's confirmation of the executions. Two other men and one woman who remained unidentified were also executed along with the couple.
Relatives of the woman said they do not know why she was killed.
Soleyman Kalimia was born in Jerusalem in 1956 to a Jewish family of Iranian descent. At one point she moved to Miami and eventually received US citizenship. According to her family, she had two passports: American and European. Her son lives in Europe.
In the past few years, for reasons unknown to her family, Soleyman Kalimia began to visit Iran. She was able to enter and leave the country three times, before she was eventually arrested and sent to prison.
The official cause for her arrest was adultery, from what little information that is known to her family.
Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, Michael Posner, spoke before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations last Wednesday, and discussed the human rights' situation in Iran.

Posner said human rights in the Islamic Republic had deteriorated in the first part of 2011.

"Protestors were killed in Tehran in February and in ethnically-Arab areas in April; additional sentences were levied on those already in prison merely for sending letters to family members; political prisoners are held in deplorable conditions with convicted murderers in former stockyards," he told the committee.

He mentioned that "a Jewish woman and her Armenian-Christian husband were reportedly executed based on undisclosed charges.


Mass executions of mainly ethnic minority prisoners have been carried out without their families’ knowledge; Iran has executed at least 135 people this year."