Convicted of murder by an Iranian court for killing a man who was raping her, Reyhaneh Jabbari, was executed by hanging Saturday morning at Tehran.

With 600 executions in 2013, Iran was second only to China in that category. Chinese authorities don't disclose how many executions take place, but the Dui Hua Foundation said 4,000 people were executed in 2011. Amnesty International says the last time it was able to estimate "fairly accurately" in 2008, China executed 1,718 people.

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Human rights groups strongly condemned the hanging as a miscarriage of justice. Even Iranian president Hassan Rouhani tried to have the sentence reversed to no avail. The court said the victim's family needed to ask for the sentence to be reduced under the "eye for an eye law," but they refused.

Jabbari, 26, said during her 2009 that she killed Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, 47, a physician who once worked for the Intelligence Ministry. She said the 2007 killing was self-defense.

Western human rights groups campaigned for Jabbari's release, saying it was a miscarriage of justice. The case sparked considerable controversy within Iran where many people are highly critical of the hard-line court system that specializes in televised confessions and mass trials.

Jabbari met Sarbandi at an ice-cream shop in 2007. He overheard her talking about working as an interior designer and invited her to visit his office about a possible re-design. What happened next has been the subject of debate.

Some say they continued to see each other before she killed Sarbandi on July 7. Jabbari said she bought a knife for protection on July 5. Police said she stabbed Sarbandi in the back while he was on a prayer rug. He ran down a staircase shouting, "Thief! Thief!" before collapsing, police said.

Prosecutors said Jabbari took the knife to a meeting with Sarbandi intending to kill him. They said she sent a text message to a friend the night he died, saying, "I will kill tonight." Jabbari initially said a friend killed Sarbandi , but later changed her story.

The United Nations office for human rights said a confession obtained by authorities was coerced from Jabbari. Amnesty International called the investigation deeply flawed.

TagsReyhaneh Jabbari, Iran, justice, Executed, Murder, Amnesty International, Human Rights