JAN 13: A woman who spent seven years on Death Row in Iran has been spared execution by the family of the police chief she stabbed to death and sexually mutilated for trying to rape her.

The death sentence for Afsaneh Nowrouzi raised an outcry from activists and drew the attention of international groups who sought to overturn the order.

This week, following mediation by the judiciary, the family of Behzad Moghaddam agreed to accept compensation of $62,500 instead of Nowrouzi's execution. Nowrouzi, 34, is expected to be released from prison soon.

In 1997, Nowrouzi killed Moghaddam, the police chief on Kish island in the Persian Gulf. Her lawyer said she also cut off his penis and placed it on his chest, a previously confidential detail sure to shock this conservative country — where even talking about sex is taboo.

The court rejected her self-defense claim, convicting her of murder and sentencing her to death. She has been held in a prison in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas ever since.

The case highlighted how difficult it can be for Iranian women to obtain justice against rapists. Unless a woman has very strong evidence, it is very difficult to prove she was raped, and sometimes she ends up being charged with adultery or illicit sex, which carry the death penalty — usually hanging or stoning. If she kills the attempted rapist, she can be tried for murder and sentenced to death.

If a man is proved to have raped a woman, he also faces execution. In most cases, however, the man is freed by judges who traditionally blame women for attracting sexual advances.

Iran's Supreme Court initially upheld Nowrouzi's death sentence, but last year, under intense international pressure, judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi ordered a stay of the verdict.

The Supreme Court took a second look at the case and overturned the death sentence due to "technical deficiencies." It ordered a new ruling from the Kish court.

As the court was readdressing the case, judiciary officials intervened with Moghaddam's family.

Yektan-Khodaei, the provincial official, said they urged Moghaddam's mother and his two children to show mercy to Nowrouzi, a mother of two.

But Nowrouzi's lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, said his client never sought mercy because she believed she had justly defended herself.

"The victim's family members did a good thing signing documents not calling for Nowrouzi's death despite my client's refusal to request mercy," he said.

Women's activist and lawyer Sara Irani praised the resolution of the case, saying execution "would mean women are condemned to death whether they kill the rapist or give in to sex."

Judiciary official Mohammad Javad Yavari said the death sentence cannot be brought against Nowrouzi again

JAN 13: The front page of the British newspaper, The Sun, on Jan. 13,  showed Britain's Prince Harry with a cigarette and drink in hand, wearing a swastika armband at a fancy dress party.

The photo was snapped last weekend at a "native and colonial" fancy dress party also attended by Harry's brother Prince William, 22, who opted for a rather less controversial "lion and leopard outfit", The Sun said.

Prince Harry then apologized in a statement, saying he was very sorry if he "caused any offense or embarrassment to anyone."

Meanwhile, Harry's prospects of attending Britain's top army officers' college will not be hurt by his decision to wear a Nazi German military uniform to a costume party, the ministry of defense said on Thursday.

"This incident will not affect Prince Harry's place at Sandhurst," said a ministry spokesperson after Harry was pictured in the Sun newspaper at a weekend bash in Nazi desert gear, complete with swastika armband.

"The same principle would apply in the case of any other pre-entrance cadet," she said.

She added: "Prince Harry is not yet in the army.

"If a cadet at Sandhurst was considered to have committed a serious error of judgment, it would be dealt with on a case by case basis by the chain of command."

Harry, 20, the younger son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana is to begin studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in Camberley, Surrey, southeast England, in May, where he will be subject to rigid military discipline.

Others called into question Harry's plans to attend the Sandhurst military academy and joining British army as a serving officer.

"I don't think this young man is suitable for Sandhurst," said Doug Henderson, a former armed forces minister in Prime Minister Tony Blair's government.

Former royal press spokesperson Dicky Arbiter said that, with Holocaust Memorial Day coming up, "a written apology is not enough".

"If he wants to be considered an adult, he has got to behave like an adult, and he has got to apologize in person," he said.

"It is just not good enough to behave like that. We all know history, and at 20 there is no excuse."

(Based on news reports)