Woman Sentenced to Death by Stoning Could Now Be Hanged Instead
'Save Sakineh' posters in Rome. There has been worldwide condemnation of Iran's death sentence for the 43-year-old mother-of-two. Photograph: The Independent
THE INDEPENDENT: Confusion surrounded the fate of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani yesterday, the Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, who now faces execution by hanging for the alleged murder of her husband, according to some reports.

The government says no final decision has been taken in a case that has generated outrage around the world, as the adultery and murder issues are still before the courts. A final judgement would be announced only when that process is completed, Ramin Mehmanparast, the foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters in Tehran.

But he indicated that the focus was shifting to a charge of murder, and seemed to suggest that Ms Ashtiani's guilt was not in doubt. "Right now, what we are pursuing is the topic of murder, and her participation in murder is confirmed," he said. >>> Rupert Cornwell in Washington | Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Ashtiani Outrage Spurs Iran to Commute Stoning Sentences to Hanging
THE GUARDIAN: Tehran carries out series of judicial reviews but lawyer fears women who have not attracted media attention will be executed

Iran appears to be quietly changing the sentences of Iranians awaiting death by stoning to hanging after international outcry following the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two.

Mariam Ghorbanzadeh, 25, who was six months' pregnant and miscarried after being beaten up in Tabriz prison this week, was initially sentenced to death by stoning for adultery but her sentence has been commuted to hanging in a rapid judicial review. The decision is thought to have been driven by the Iranian authorities' desire to avoid further international condemnation over the barbaric punishment.

According to Iranian law, officials could not carry out her sentence while she was pregnant. Speaking to the Guardian, her lawyer, Houtan Kian, who represents Mohammadi Ashtiani and two other women kept in Tabriz prison convicted of adultery, said: "My fear is that Iran executes Mariam and those others whose cases have not attracted media attention."

Another of Kian's clients, Azar Bagheri, 19, was imprisoned at the age of 15 after her husband accused her of having an extramarital relationship. Bagheri was on death row for adultery but her sentence was commuted to 100 lashes after Mohammadi Ashtiani's story came to light. Although Bagheri's death penalty was handed down four years ago, the sentence could not be carried out until she was 18 years of old.

"All these women are convicted for adultery but Iran is trying to change their sentences after Sakineh's case has embarrassed them," Kian said. (+ video) >>> Saeed Kamali Dehghan | Thursday, August 12, 2010

Kampf gegen Steinigung: Iranische Sittenwächter beleidigen Carla Bruni
Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Foto: Spiegel Online
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Geht es nach einigen iranischen Berichterstattern, ist die Gattin des französischen Präsidenten Nicolas Sarkozy nichts als eine Hure, ein unmoralisches Wesen. Carla Brunis Vergehen: Sie will eine zum Tode verurteilte Iranerin vor der Steinigung bewahren.

Teheran - Weil sie eine angeblich untreue Frau vor der Todesstrafe retten will, sieht sich die französische Präsidentengattin Carla Bruni-Sarkozy derzeit ebenso heftiger wie unsachlicher Kritik aus den Reihen konservativer iranischer Meinungsmacher ausgesetzt.

Erst nannte die staatliche Zeitung "Kajhan" das ehemalige Model in einem Artikel vom Samstag eine Prostituierte. Am Montag dann legte die regierungsnahe iranische Website www.inn.ir nach und bezeichnete die Première Dame als "unmoralisch". "Die Vorgeschichte zeigt klar, warum diese unmoralische Frau eine wegen Ehebruchs verurteilte Frau unterstützt", hieß es auf der Website. Bruni hatte sich wie Hunderte ihrer Landsleute gegen die Steinigung von Sakineh Mohammadi Aschtiani ausgesprochen. In einem offenen Brief forderte sie in der vergangenen Woche eine Aussetzung des Todesurteils. "Frankreich wird Sie nicht aufgeben", schrieb das ehemalige Model. >>> ala/AP/AFP | Montag, 30. August 2010

Verbunden >>>

La presse iranienne s'en prend à Carla Bruni-Sarkozy
lePARISIEN.fr: Le soutien de Carla Bruni-Sarkozy à Sakineh, cette Iranienne condamnée à mort par lapidation, vaut à la Première dame de France des attaques virulentes de la presse iranienne. Le site internet du groupe de presse gouvernemental Iran, dénonce ce lundi «l'immoralité» de l'épouse du président de la République.

Le site www.inn.ir estime que «les médias occidentaux, en détaillant ses nombreux antécédents d'immoralité, ont implicitement confirmé qu'elle méritait ce titre».

Mais c'est le journal Kayhan, proche du pouvoir, qui est allé le plus loin. Dans le quotidien ultra-conservateur, cité par le Telegraph et le Dailymail, on peut lire : «Les prostituées françaises se joignent aux protestations pour les droits de l'Homme.» Carla Bruni-Sarkozy y est qualifiée d'«épouse infâme», «d'actrice et chanteuse dépravée, qui a réussi a briser la famille de Sarkozy et à épouser le président français». Kayhan s'en prend également à Isabelle Adjani, taxée d'actrice «à la morale corrompue». >>> Leparisien.fr avec l’AFP | Lundi 30 Août 2010

BILD.de: Iraner beschimpfen Carla Bruni als „Hure“: Böse Beschimpfung für Carla Bruni (41), eine iranische Zeitung nennt die Frau des französischen Präsidenten eine „Hure“! >>> | Montag, 30. August 2010

Agitation autour de l’affaire Sakineh
LE TEMPS: Une annulation de la lapidation de l’Iranienne condamnée à mort pour adultère est «possible», selon un responsable régional de la justice ce dimanche, après une série de déclarations plus ou moins mises en scène qui ont eu lieu tout ce week-end

De grandes manoeuvres semblent avoir commencé autour de cette Iranienne condamnée à la lapidation pour adultère, et dont le sort fait l’objet d’une forte mobilisation notamment en Occident depuis cet été. La peine de mort de Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani pourrait en effet être annulée, du moins si on en croit un haut responsable de la Justice iranienne, le chef de la Justice de la province d’Azerbaïdjan oriental, Malek Ajdar Sharifi, qui a déclaré ce di manche [sic] que «tout était possible». >>> LT / AFP | Dimanche 02 Janvier 2011

Condamnée à mort par lapidation, elle avoue tout à la télévision
TRIBUNE DE GENÈVE: IRAN | Une Iranienne, dont la condamnation à mort par lapidation pour adultère a suscité l'indignation mondiale, a reconnu avoir été complice de l'assassinat de son mari.

Elle a admis avoir commis un adultère.

Dans une interview diffusée mercredi soir lors d'une émission politique dénonçant la "propagande des médias occidentaux", une femme présentée comme Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani reconnaît qu'un homme avec lequel elle était en relation lui avait proposé de tuer son mari, et qu'elle a laissé cet homme commettre le meurtre lors duquel elle était présente.

Cette femme, qui parle en azéri (turc) et dont les propos sont traduits en persan, est enveloppée d'un tchador noir qui ne laisse apparaître que son nez et un oeil. Le responsable de la justice de la province d'Azerbaidjan oriental où l'affaire s'est déroulée en 2006, affirme lors de l'émission que Mme Mohammadi-Ashtiani a également endormi son mari en lui faisant une piqûre avant que le meurtrier ne l'électrocute. >>> ATS | Jeudi 12 Août 2010

Liens en relation avec l’article >>>

THE GUARDIAN: Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani 'confesses' to murder on Iran state TV: Lawyer says Ashtiani was tortured before interview recorded in Tabiz prison, and fears execution imminent >>> Saeed Kamali Dehghan | Thursday, August 12, 2010

Iranian Woman Sentenced to Be Stoned: Actress Shohreh Aghdashloo speaks out against the court-ordered stoning of a woman in Iran.


Condemned Iranian Woman Denounces Lawyer


Protesters Rally for Iranian Women

Iran Snubs Brazilian Asylum Offer for Stoning Woman
THE GUARDIAN: Official says 'humane and emotional' Brazilian president may not have all facts in Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani case

Iran signalled today that it was likely to reject the Brazilian president's offer to give refuge to an Iranian woman convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning.

The case of 43-year-old Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani triggered an international outcry that prompted Iran to at least temporarily withdraw the stoning sentence. Ashtiani, who has two children, could still be hanged.

Ramin Mehmanparast, a foreign ministry spokesman, said: "A far as we know, [the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula] Da Silva is a very humane and emotional person who probably has not received enough information about the case."

Further information would be provided to the president to clarify the situation about "an individual who is a convicted offender", he added. Iran says Ashtiani has also been convicted of murder. >>> Associated Press | Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Italians Attack Muammar Gaddafi Over Islam Comments
THE TELEGRAPH: Italians have reacted with indignation after Muammar Gaddafi lectured 200 young actresses and models on the superiority of Islam, a day after saying that Europeans should all become Muslim.

Young women for a meeting with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in Rome. Photograph: The Telegraph
Silvio Berlusconi’s increasingly close relationship with Col Gaddafi is becoming a source of embarrassment for the Italian prime minister, according to opposition MPs and even members of the government.

On Monday, the Libyan leader recruited the women through a modelling agency to join him and Mr Berlusconi, in viewing a photography exhibition at a Rome cultural institute which traced historical links between the two countries.

Telling them that Islam was the “ultimate religion”, Gaddafi insisted that “if you want to believe in a single faith then it must be that of Mohammed,” according to one of the women who sat through the lecture. >>> Nick Squires in Rome | Monday, August 30, 2010

LE FIGARO: Colère en Italie après un nouveau show de Kadhafi: En visite officielle à Rome, le dirigeant libyen a plaidé pour que l'Islam devienne «la religion de toute l'Europe». >>> Par Olfa Khamira | Lundi 30 Août 2010

About Gaddafi’s conversion party >>>

“Italy has become the Disneyland of Gaddafi and his senile vanities.” – Gianfranco Fini [Source: Mail Online]

I guess that the Italians have finally woken up, as the rest of the West needs to do, and have told Gaddafi to stick his benighted religion – Islam – where the sun don’t shine. We sane Westerners are getting sick to death of listening to the crap espoused about that bloody awful faith by its adherents. It’s a faith for mentally challenged people. Witness the possible stoning to death of that poor woman in Iran, Sakineh. Who, in his right mind, could worship a god who calls for such an innocent woman to be stoned to death? Even if she had committed adultery, which is very questionable, so bloody what? She wouldn’t be the only woman in the world to have done so. Let her Maker be her judge! Who gave these bloody idiots the right to judge others?

And by the way, if Obama really is a Muslim, as I suspect he is, then he is mentally challenged too. – © Mark

How Do We Convince Iran That Stoning Is Barbaric?
THE GLOBE AND MAIL: Tehran’s legal codes are studded with inconsistencies and vagaries that make due process virtually impossible

The harrowing case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani – a mother of two sentenced to stoning by an Iranian court for adultery – has rightfully drawn the world’s attention to Iran’s draconian penal code, which reserves its cruellest punishments for women. The practice of stoning in particular is so abhorrent that even political allies such as Brazil have been roused to action. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has offered Ms. Ashtiani asylum, but a foreign leader can have no direct bearing on a domestic legal proceeding. The Brazilian intervention, however, sends a powerful message to the Islamic Republic: Its human-rights record can never be divorced from its nuclear diplomacy.

Before the 1979 Islamic revolution, back in the years when I worked as a judge in Iran, consensual sexual relations between adults did not figure in the country’s criminal code. The revolution enacted a version of Islamic law extraordinarily harsh even by the standards of the Islamic world, making extramarital sex a crime. The punishment for a single man or woman guilty of sex outside marriage became 100 lashes; under Article 86, the punishment for a married person became death by stoning.

On the face of things, stoning is not a gendered punishment, for the law stipulates that adulterous men face the same brutal end. But because Iranian law permits polygamy, it effectively offers men an escape route: They are able to claim that their adulterous relationship was, in fact, a temporary marriage (Iranian law recognizes “marriages” of even a few hours duration between men and single women). Men typically exploit this escape clause, and are rarely sentenced to stoning. But married women accused of adultery have no access to such reprieve.

The barbarity of stoning aside, Iran’s legal codes are studded with inconsistencies and vagaries that make due process virtually impossible. The penal code notes that, if a man or woman is denied sexual access to a spouse due to travel or other prolonged separation, 100 lashes suffice as punishment for adultery, but it does not specify the duration of acceptable separation. Stoning can also be reduced to lashes when a married woman has sex with a minor (Iranian law considers the age of maturation for girls 9, and for boys 15). Read on and comment >>> Shirin Ebadi | Thursday, August 05, 2010

Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian human-rights activist and Nobel laureate.

Mobilisation contre la lapidation de Sakineh

Iranian Teenager Faces Execution for 'False' Gay Assault Charges
PINK NEWS: An 18-year-old Iranian man is facing execution over a false sodomy charge, campaigners say.

Ebrahim Hamidi was sentenced to death two years ago at the age of 16 for an unspecified assault on another man.

Although the allegation was withdrawn and the Iranian Supreme Court has rejected the guilty verdict and execution order, a lower provincial court is insisting on Mr Hamidi's execution.

Now, his fate lies in the hands of the Supreme Court, which must decided whether to uphold the execution order.

Previously, he was represented by the human rights lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei but Mr Mostafaei has gone into hiding after a warrant for his arrest was issued.

The lawyer is also representing Sakineh Ashtiani, the Iranian woman who has been sentenced to death by stoning on charges of adultery.

Supporters of Mr Hamidi say that while Ms Ashtiani is unlikely to face death because she has international support, he could be executed at any time.

They are asking for people to contact their MPs to raise awareness of Mr Hamidi's plight. >>> Staff Writer, PinkNews.co.uk | Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Iran Halts Woman's Stoning 'For Now'
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Iran's judiciary chief has halted "for the moment" the execution by stoning of a woman accused of adultery, according to the state news agency.

Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two, was sentenced to death by stoning after being found guilty of adultery by an Iranian court, a ruling that sparked outcry in Western countries. >>> | Sunday, July 11, 2010

Related articles here

Stop the Execution of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani (Mirror)

Report: 99 Lashes for Iranian Woman [Sakineh] on Death Row
FOX NEWS: Lawyer: Woman could be stoned soon

Iran Set to Execute 18-year-old on False Charge of Sodomy
THE OBSERVER: The client of human rights lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei has been sentenced to death in spite of retracted testimony

Lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei fled into exile after his wife was arrested in Iran two weeks ago. Photograph: The Observer
An 18-year-old Iranian is facing imminent execution on charges of homosexuality, even though he has no legal representation. Ebrahim Hamidi, who is not gay, was sentenced to death for lavat, or sodomy, on the basis of "judge's knowledge", a legal loophole that allows for subjective judicial rulings where there is no conclusive evidence.

Hamidi had been represented by human rights lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei, who has since been forced to flee Iran after bringing to international attention the case of another of his clients, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43-year-old Iranian mother of two who has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery. Mostafaei was due to arrive in Norway yesterday to begin a life in exile while continuing his campaigns on behalf of his clients, including Hamidi.

At the same time, human rights activist Peter Tatchell has written to the foreign secretary, William Hague, urging him to contact the chief justice of Iran and ask that the execution be halted.

"Ebrahim's case is evidence that innocent heterosexual people can be sentenced to death on false charges of homosexuality [in Iran]," said Tatchell, co-founder of the London-based gay rights group OutRage.

Hamidi was arrested two years ago in the suburbs of the western city of Tabriz in the East Azerbaijan province after a fight with members of another family. Three of his friends were also involved in the incident and were subsequently arrested. Later, the four were accused of homosexual assault on a man and of attempting to abuse him sexually.

A person convicted of homosexuality in Iran can be lashed, hanged or stoned to death. The law includes a variety of penalties for different acts: 99 lashes if two unrelated males sleep "unnecessarily" under the same blanket – even without any sexual contact. A boy raped by an adult man would also be lashed if the court decided that he had "enjoyed" the experience. >>> Saeed Kamali Dehghan | Sunday, August 08, 2010

Why Have Western Feminists Been So Muted in Their Criticisms of Iran?
THE TELEGRAPH – BLOGS – TOBY YOUNG: The fate of the 43-year-old Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning took a sinister turn yesterday when she appeared on Iranian state television to confess to her “crimes”. Her lawyer fears she will now be executed imminently, probably hung by the neck until she is dead.

Many human rights groups have criticised the Iranian authorities for their brutal treatment of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, including Amnesty International and the International Committee Against Stoning. The mother of two has already received 99 lashes for committing adultery and according to her lawyer, who has fled the country after a warrant was issued for his arrest, she has been beaten and tortured in jail. Yet the response of feminists in the West has been strangely muted.

Hillary Clinton lost no opportunity to brandish her feminist credentials during her campaign to become the Democratic Party’s Presidential nominee in 2008 and even went so far as to blame her failure to beat Barack Obama on the “glass ceiling”. Unfortunately, the concrete ceiling of Ashtiani’s jail cell hasn’t inspired any comparable rhetoric. All she has said is that she’s “troubled” by Ashtiani’s case.

At least Hillary Clinton was able to bring herself to mutter this mild rebuke. No other prominent feminist has spoken out about Ashtiani’s case, unless you include Yoko Ono who has signed the petition calling for her to be freed. We’ve heard nothing from Germaine Greer, nothing from Gloria Steinem, nothing from Jane Fonda, nothing from Naomi Wolf, nothing from Clare Short, nothing from Harriet Harmen.

We know why, of course. Almost no one on the left, with the honourable exception of Christopher Hitchens, dares to breath a word against any Islamic country for fear of being branded “Islamophobic”. Thus, a brutal dictatorship is able to torture and murder thousands of innocent women, safe in the knowledge that the self-styled keepers of the West’s conscience will remain silent. Continue reading and comment >>> Toby Young | Friday, August 13, 2010

Related >>>

Iran Airs New Confession by Woman in Stoning Case
FOX NEWS: TEHRAN, IRAN – An Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery confessed to helping a man kill her husband and re-enacted the alleged crime in an interview broadcast Friday by Iranian state television — an apparent effort by the government to deflect international criticism over the case.

It was the fourth time Sakineh Mohammedi Ashtiani has been shown on TV as Tehran has faced an international outcry over the announcement that she would be stoned to death, the latest source of friction between Iran and the West.

Authorities announced her conviction in the murder case only after the uproar over the stoning sentence erupted last summer, and her lawyer — who has since been arrested — said she was never formally put on trial for the killing and was tortured into confessing. Iranian authorities could use the murder charge to justify executing Ashtiani by hanging instead of stoning.

In the new footage broadcast on English-language Press TV, the 43-year-old mother of two was brought from the prison to her home outside the city of Tabriz in northwestern Iran where she was shown acting out the alleged December 2005 killing, complete with an actor portraying her husband.

Ashtiani, dressed in black with a beige scarf covering her hair, described how she began an affair with another man identified as Isa Taheri. She said she gave her husband an injection that rendered him unconscious, then Taheri came to her house and electrocuted him.

Amnesty International criticized the broadcast, which was announced by Press TV earlier Friday, saying it violated international standards for a fair trial by having Ashtiani implicate herself in a crime. >>> Associated Press | Friday, December 10, 2010

THE TIMES: Iran ‘freed Ashtiani to frame case against her’ >>> Martin Fletcher, Hugh Tomlinson | Saturday, December 11, 2010 (£)

Iran Suspends Stoning of Woman
THE TELEGRAPH: Iran has suspended the execution by stoning of a woman convicted of adultery, the Foreign Ministry has confirmed, after weeks of condemnation from around the world.

The announcement came a day after European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called the stoning sentence against Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani "barbaric beyond words", the latest in a string of criticisms by foreign powers.

"The verdict regarding the extramarital affairs has stopped and it's being reviewed," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told Iran's state-run English-language Press TV.

Ashtiani was convicted of adultery – a capital crime in the Islamic Republic – in 2006. She also has been charged with involvement in her husband's murder. >>> | Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad May End Up as Genghis Khan with a Nuclear Bomb
THE TELEGRAPH: Iran will not be shamed into abandoning stoning, or its nuclear ambitions, says Alasdair Palmer.

Joseph Stalin was once described as "Genghis Khan with a telephone". President Ahmadinejad may soon be Genghis Khan with a nuclear bomb. Admittedly, Ahmadinejad hasn't yet committed mass murder on that scale, although when he promised to "wipe Israel off the map", he showed that he would – if only he could. And he may treat his own people slightly better than Genghis Khan treated his. But as Dr Johnson said, "there is no settling orders of precedence between a louse and a flea".

Ahmadinejad has imprisoned thousands for protesting against the brutality, incompetence and illegitimacy of his rule; he has condoned the imposition of the death penalty for any Muslim who converts to another faith; and he supports punishing adultery by stoning those involved to death.

There has been a global campaign to persuade Iran to end stoning, a disgustingly barbaric punishment which inflicts pain of the same order as impaling, Genghis Khan's favourite method of execution, and may take even longer to cause death. It centres on the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 44-year-old mother and widow who was convicted of adultery in 2006 and punished with 99 lashes. She has been in prison ever since, as the judges decided that 99 lashes wasn't a severe enough sentence for the crime of loving someone who isn't your spouse: she deserved to be stoned to death. Continue reading and comment >>> Alasdair Palmer | Saturday, September 04, 2010

The Forced Interview with Sakineh and Sajad, Hootan and Two German Journalists

THE TIMES: Blurred and dubbed: the Ashtiani TV trial is a sham to fool Iranians >>> Hugh Tomlinson | Wednesday, November 17, 2010 (Behind a paywall: £)

Geständnis unter Folter
SCHWEIZER FERNSEHEN: Sakineh Ashtani gestand gestern im Iranischen Fernsehen öffentlich ihren Ehebruch. Sie habe zu spät festgestellt, dass ihr neuer Partner ein Berufskiller sei. Für Amnesty International ist die Erpressung öffentlicher Geständnisse nichts Neues. Ashtanis Situation hat sich dadurch arg verschlechtert.



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