Background Information The incident that took place in March of 2005 during the rape attempt of 17-year-old Nazanin Fatehi and her 15-year-old niece was determined as an act of self-defense by the five trial judges who reviewed her case. She was exonerated from the murder charge, however the court ruled that disproportionate force was used by Nazanin. Accordingly, Nazanin was ordered to pay "diyeh" (blood money) to compensate the family of the deceased. Nazanin's lawyers are appealing this order of blood money. Since this appeal may take several months, they requested that Nazanin be released in the meantime on bail. The court has set bail in the amount of 400,000,000 Rials (approx US$43,000). In July 2006, with the generous assistance of the Honourable Belinda Stronach, Canadian Member of Parliament, and the Honourable Rod A. A. Zimmer, Canadian Senator, an international trust fund was created to help with the campaign costs involved with the effort to save the life of Nazanin Fatehi. Because Nazanin's family is very poor and unable to make payment of the bail or blood money, donations were collected to secure Nazanin's release from prison. All donations were allocated to the requested bail, however the campaign costs leading to her release have not yet been covered. If the appeal is not successful and Nazanin is subjected to pay blood money to the family of the man that was killed (anticipated to be over US$35,000), this will come from reimbursement of the bail. Any remaining balance will be used to assist Nazanin’s family as well as any other cases of minors sentenced to death in Iran. However if the appeal is successful, any excess donation fund will be used to assist Nazanin’s family as well as any other cases of minors sentenced to death in Iran such as the non-profit organization of the lawyers who have taken on Nazanin's case pro-bono, Amnesty International Violence against Women program and the International Committee Against Execution.