Decision to stone two Iranian women to death for adultery evokes worldwide condemnation

Iran's stone age

Decision to stone two Iranian women to death for adultery evokes worldwide condemnation

The Times newspaper of London yesterday published news of Azar Bagheri who, within a year of her marriage to an older man, had been charged with adultery and sentenced to be stoned to death.

The sentence could not be carried out until the girl reached the age of 18. So the girl has been languishing on death row for her to reach maturity.

Meanwhile the girl has been subjected to two mock stonings, on each occasion the girl being taken out of her cell and buried up to her shoulders in preparation for her ultimate stoning in the yard of Tabriz prison in northeast Iran.

Have mercy: A protester dressed as somebody about to be executed by stoning takes part in a protest in Trafalgar Square, London, to highlight the punishment inflicted on people under the Iranian regime including Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani (below right). Pics/AFP

It is reported that Bagheri's lawyers are now planning to ask the judges to reduce her sentence to 99 lashes. According to Mina Ahadi, an Iranian human rights activist, Bagheri was denounced by her own husband, who accused her of adultery with two men.

Bagheri's lawyers are hoping that the international campaign against death sentence for women convicted of adultery will prompt the court to show clemency.

Open letter
More than 80 British and foreign luminaries last week signed an open letter, expressing "horror and dismay" at Ms Ashtiani's case and urging the Iranian government to overturn her sentence.

Signatories included Condoleezza Rice, the former US secretary of state, British foreign secretary William Hague, three former British secretaries, the president of the European Parliament, leading human rights activists, the US State Department, lawyers, writers, philosophers and actors. Indian film producer Shekhar Kapoor and actor Shabana Azmi are also reported to have condemned the Iran government's proposed move.

Following demonstrations in London (protesters erected a wooden gallows outside the Iranian embassy and passing cars hooted in support) and growing international condemnation of the earlier sentence on Ashtiani by celebrities and human rights groups, the Iranian authorities appeared to back down.

The Iranian embassy in London said that "according to information from the relevant judicial authorities" the stoning would not go ahead.

However, there is no official word from Iran and human rights activists fear that Bagheri like Ashtiani, could still be executed by other means.

According to Amnesty International, three Iranian women, convicted to death by stoning, had been hanged instead.

Ashtiani was convicted in 2006 for having an "illicit relationship" with two men, for which she has already received a public flogging of 99 lashes. She was convicted despite the fact that her husband had been killed before the alleged affair.

According to her family, even though no evidence was given, during a separate trial of two men accused of murdering her husband, another found her guilty of committing adultery with the suspects.

According to her lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei, Ashtiani has been waiting to be stoned to death for six years.

"She is having repetitive endless nightmares about death mixed with people stoning her."

Her 22-year old son Sajad Ghader-zade, who has started a campaign at great risk to himself and who was forced to watch the flogging while his sister waited outside, "It was the saddest moment of my life watching my mother after that (flogging) in pain and crying and my sister hugging her and sobbing."

"Our goal," he says, "is to save her, not to substitute stoning with another means of execution."

Under Iran's penal code, adultery is the only crime punishable by stoning as an "offence against divine law". The death sentence may also be imposed for murder, rape armed robbery and drug trafficking but offenders are usually hanged.

Law states...
The objective of stoning under Iran law is to cause a slow and painful death of the convict.

Iran's penal law states: "The size of the stoneu00a0... shall not be too large to kill the convict by one nor two throws and at the same time shall not be too small to be called a stone."

In a passionate editorial London's The Times newspaper described the proposed stoning of Ashtiani as an "act of barbarism" and said "stoning is a brutal medieval punishment that damages Iran in the eyes of the world. Iran must repeal this law, and spare Sakineh Ashtiani".

However, despite the crescendo of support for Ashtiani, Mohammad Javad Larijani, head of the Iranian judiciary's human rights council, is reported as saying in Teheran that Ashtiani's sentence was under review but "our justice system will not change its course due to a media attack. The hue and cry that the West has launched over this case will not alter our judges."

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