Iranian woman at centre of adultery case to be hanged

AN Iranian woman whose sentence of execution by stoning for adultery provoked a worldwide outcry will instead be hanged for murder today, a human rights group said.

“The authorities in Tehran have given the go-ahead to Tabriz prison for the execution of Iran stoning case Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani,” the International Committee against Stoning, a German-based campaign group, said on its website. “It has been reported that she is to be executed this Wednesday, 3 November.”

Officials in Iran were not available to confirm or deny the report.

Ashtiani’s stoning sentence was suspended after prominent political and religious figures called it “medieval,” “barbaric” and “brutal”. Brazil, a close ally of Iran’s, offered to give the 43-year-old mother of two asylum.

A government spokesman said in September Ashtiani’s adultery conviction was under review but the charge of being complicit in the murder of her husband was still pending.

Under the Islamic law in force in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, murder is punishable by hanging, adultery by stoning.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fended off questions about the case from reporters when he attended the UN General Assembly in September, saying it had been fabricated by hostile Western media and called the United States hypocritical for its record on executions.