Iran suspends stoning to death of woman

IRANIAN authorities have suspended the sentence of death by stoning for a woman convicted of adultery, the foreign ministry said yesterday, after weeks of condemnation from around the world.

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

The statement came a day after European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called the sentence “barbaric beyond words”, the latest in a string of criticisms by foreign powers.