Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani
Encyclopedia
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani , is an Iran
ian woman who has gained the attention of human rights groups and people throughout the world for a conviction of adultery and accompanying sentence of death by stoning. Since 2006, she has been imprisoned and under a death sentence in Tabriz
, Iran after being convicted of adultery. An international campaign to overturn her sentence was started by her children, Farideh and Sajjad Qaderzadeh through a letter about their mother's case which was published by mission free Iran. Prominent media sources picked up on the news via interviews with her son, which included information on her stoning
sentence. The international publicity generated by Ashtiani's situation led to numerous diplomatic conflicts between Iran's government and the heads of certain western governments. As a result, her execution has been stayed indefinitely. Shortly after the international campaign began, various Iranian officials stated that Sakineh is also guilty of various charges related to the murder of her husband. The range of charges included murder, manslaughter, conspiracy, and complicity. However, major human rights organizations such as Amnesty International
, some NGOs and her lawyers have stated that she was acquitted of murder, and that Sakineh initially received a 10 year sentence for complicity, where her actions were disturbed the public order. After numerous appeals, the Iranian courts reduced the sentence to 5 years, as that was the maximum that she could receive for the charge.
As of January 2011, her stoning sentence has been "suspended", due to all related parties "forgiving" her for her adultery. She will remain in prison for complicity in murder and disrupting public order until 2016, unless she is paroled sooner.
Iranian woman born ca. 1968 in the rural town of Osku
, East Azerbaijan Province, Iran
. Sakineh worked outside her home for two years as a kindergarten teacher.
On May 15, 2006 Sakineh pleaded guilty for having an "illicit relationship outside marriage". If a person pleads guilty to adultery under Islamic law, the sentence may be either death by stoning or 100 lashes. The court handed down a punishment of 100 lashes, her son watched the whipping.
Ashtiani had allegedly committed adultery
with the man (Isa Taheri) who murdered her husband. Taheri was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Under Islamic law, murder must be absolved by diyya
(blood money given to victim's family) or qisas
(retributive execution); Ashtiani's children chose to accept diyya. Taheri was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment. According to some sources, he is now no longer in prison.
In September 2006, her case was brought up again, where she was tried for adultery and murder. She was found not guilty of murder, but found guilty of being complicity in murder, and given 10 years imprisonment in Tabriz Prison. She told the court that she had pleaded guilty earlier, but then recanted her confession in front of the court. In Iran, if a person is found guilty of adultery without a guilty plea, the death penalty is mandatory. She was convicted of adultery once again, and this time was sentenced to death by stoning
. Ashtiani may have had difficulty understanding the case because she speaks Azeri and not Farsi
. Malek Ejdar Sharifi, head of East Azerbaijan Province's judiciary said, "She was sentenced to capital punishment
... for committing murder, manslaughter and adultery." However, according to advocacy group Mission Free Iran, this is contrary to the documentation on Ashtiani's case. Iran's Supreme Court confimred her death sentence in 2007. Her request for an offical pardon was turned down by the offical "Amnesty and Pardons Commission" of Iran soon afterward. .
The Press Section of the Iranian Embassy in London, issued the following statement on July 8, 2010: "Considering the statements made by the Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt
on an Iranian national, Mrs Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, and her execution, hereby this mission denies the false news aired in this respect and notifies the Ministry that according to information from the relevant judicial authorities in Iran, she will not be executed by stoning punishment."
By July 9, 2010, the Iranian government banned reporters in Iran from reporting on any details of the case. One of her lawyers, Mohammed Mostafaei, fled the country when he was charged with financial fraud. Mostafaei stated that he was being harassed for defending his client, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. Mostafaei sought asylum
internationally, first in Turkey
, and then Norway
, where he was reunited with his family on September 2, 2010.
On August 4, 2010, the Iranian authorities told Ashtiani's lawyer, Houtan Kian, that she faces death by hanging
. On the same day, Tehran
's High Court rejected a reopening of the trial and instead considered the Tabriz prosecutor's demand to execute Ashtiani. Her case was subsequently transferred to the deputy prosecutor-general Saeed Mortazavi
. Ashtiani's son was told that the file on his father's murder case has been lost. Her son added that "they are lying about the charges against my mother. She was acquitted
of murdering my father but now the government is building up their own story against her". Her son's statement is contradicted by numerous Iranian news accounts describing her as being convicted of both murder and adultery.
On August 12, 2010, Ashtiani was televised from Tabriz prison on an Iranian state-run television program which showed her confessing in native Azerbaijani language
to adultery and involvement with the murder of her husband once again. Her lawyer alleged she was torture
d for two days prior to the interview.
On August 28, Ashtiani was given the 24-hour notice that she was to be hanged at dawn the next day. She wrote her last will and testament just before the call to morning prayer at 4:00 AM local time, when she expected to be led to the gallows at Tabriz Prison. However the sentence was stayed. It may have been a mock execution. Also on August 28, 2010, British newspaper The Times
published a photograph of an unveiled woman, identified as Ashtiani; the photograph had been provided to the Times by her former lawyer Mohammed Mostafaei.
On September 2, 2010, Ashtiani's son and current lawyer reported that she had been additionally convicted of "spreading corruption and indecency" for appearing unveiled and sentenced to 99 lashes. The Times subsequently reported that the photograph was not of Mrs. Ashtiani, but of Susan Hejrat, an Iranian activist living in Sweden
. Western newspapers said Ashtiani was then subjected to another round of 99 lashes, predicated on the mistaken photograph. However, Ashtiani was again shown on Iranian television on September 15, 2010, where she clarified that she had not been tortured and had not been whipped as a result of The Times photograph. The punishment for adultery is 100 lashes, and the maximum possible punishment for appearing unveiled is 74 lashes.
Following vociferous domestic and international controversy and outcry over stoning in the early years of the Islamic republic, the government placed a moratorium on stoning in 2002. In 2008, Iran's judiciary decided to submit a new draft penal code to parliament for approval. In January 2005, a spokesman for Iran's judiciary, Jamal Karimirad, was quoted as saying "Stoning has been dropped from the penal code for a long time, and in the Islamic republic, we do not see such punishments being carried out", further adding that if stoning sentences were passed by lower courts, they were over-ruled by higher courts and "no such verdicts have been carried out". In 2008, Iran's judiciary scrapped stoning in draft legislation submitted to parliament for approval. As of June 2009, Iran's parliament has been reviewing and revising the Islamic penal code to omit stoning.
Mehmanparast added, that she was guilty of both adultery and murder and that her case was undeserving of the international attention it had drawn. He said that releasing murderers should not be made into a human rights issue and called on countries criticising Iran to release all their murderers as well. According to the human rights organisation Iran Human Rights
, Ashtiani remains in danger of capital punishment by hanging.
Iran Human Rights also expressed its concerns over Mehmanparast's statement about "Sakineh's murder charge being investigated for the final verdict". Commenting on this statement, the spokesperson of Iran Human Rights
, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam
, said: "The fact that the authorities are mentioning murder charges now, could mean that Ashtiani is in danger of being sentenced to death for murder". France's Foreign Minister, according to Reuters
reported that, based on a telephone call to his Iranian counterpart, Ashtiani's hanging might be called off. A human rights group claimed that Ashtiani was sentenced to be hanged on November 3, 2010; this never materialized, and Iranian authorities clarified that Ashtiani was "held in the prison of Tabriz and in perfect health."
Her son was arrested in October 2010, after speaking to two German
reporters, who had entered the country on tourist visas. He was released on $40,000 bail in December. On January 1, 2011, he was shown on television admitting he did not doubt his mother was guilty... but urged Iranian authorities to let her live. He also said it was unfair that Isa Taheri was free. Press TV
reported that the deceased husband's "next of kin waived their right to retribution", (see diyya
and qisas
) and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
There have been some cases of political prisoners confessing on live television under torture or extreme pressure in Iran. It is not clear certain if this was such a case or not.
During July 2010, protests occurred in Rome, London
and Washington, D.C.
, among other cities. Calls to stop her execution came from leading human rights groups Avaaz
, Amnesty International
and Human Rights Watch
as well as from several high-profile celebrities. A petition was created in support of her release, and has been signed by several additional prominent activists.
On July 31, 2010, the president of Brazil
, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
, said he would ask the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to send Mrs. Ashtiani to Brazil, where she would be granted asylum. According to the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, the Brazilian ambassador in Tehran was directly instructed to communicate their asylum proposal to the Iranian government. Iranian officials responded by suggesting that Lula had "not received enough information about the case". U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
mentioned Mrs. Ashtiani in a declaration on August 10, 2010, urging Iran to respect the fundamental freedoms of its citizens.
In late August 2010, the Iranian newspaper Kayhan
called Carla Bruni-Sarkozy
, the First Lady of France, a "prostitute" who "deserved death" after she condemned the stoning sentence against Mrs. Ashtiani. Iranian officials condemned this statement and Ahmadinejad condemned Kayhan's comments toward Mrs. Bruni-Sarkozy's as a "crime" and "against Islam" .
A resolution by the European Parliament
on September 8, 2010, declared that "a sentence of death by stoning can never be justified". The vote passed by a margin of 658–1, the sole vote against having been made in error and later rectified, according to the Associated Press
. On September 29, 2010, EveryOne Group, a human rights
organisation based in Italy, appealed to the Iranian Authorities for an act of compassion for Mrs. Ashtiani.
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian woman who has gained the attention of human rights groups and people throughout the world for a conviction of adultery and accompanying sentence of death by stoning. Since 2006, she has been imprisoned and under a death sentence in Tabriz
Tabriz
Tabriz is the fourth largest city and one of the historical capitals of Iran and the capital of East Azerbaijan Province. Situated at an altitude of 1,350 meters at the junction of the Quri River and Aji River, it was the second largest city in Iran until the late 1960s, one of its former...
, Iran after being convicted of adultery. An international campaign to overturn her sentence was started by her children, Farideh and Sajjad Qaderzadeh through a letter about their mother's case which was published by mission free Iran. Prominent media sources picked up on the news via interviews with her son, which included information on her stoning
Stoning
Stoning, or lapidation, is a form of capital punishment whereby a group throws stones at a person until the person dies. No individual among the group can be identified as the one who kills the subject, yet everyone involved plainly bears some degree of moral culpability. This is in contrast to the...
sentence. The international publicity generated by Ashtiani's situation led to numerous diplomatic conflicts between Iran's government and the heads of certain western governments. As a result, her execution has been stayed indefinitely. Shortly after the international campaign began, various Iranian officials stated that Sakineh is also guilty of various charges related to the murder of her husband. The range of charges included murder, manslaughter, conspiracy, and complicity. However, major human rights organizations such as Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
, some NGOs and her lawyers have stated that she was acquitted of murder, and that Sakineh initially received a 10 year sentence for complicity, where her actions were disturbed the public order. After numerous appeals, the Iranian courts reduced the sentence to 5 years, as that was the maximum that she could receive for the charge.
As of January 2011, her stoning sentence has been "suspended", due to all related parties "forgiving" her for her adultery. She will remain in prison for complicity in murder and disrupting public order until 2016, unless she is paroled sooner.
Biography
She is an ethnic AzeriAzerbaijani people
The Azerbaijanis are a Turkic-speaking people living mainly in northwestern Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan, as well as in the neighbourhood states, Georgia, Russia and formerly Armenia. Commonly referred to as Azeris or Azerbaijani Turks , they also live in a wider area from the Caucasus to...
Iranian woman born ca. 1968 in the rural town of Osku
Osku
Osku is a city in and the capital of Osku County, East Azerbaijan Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 16,140, in 4,928 families....
, East Azerbaijan Province, Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
. Sakineh worked outside her home for two years as a kindergarten teacher.
Original proceedings
In 2005, Ebrahim Qaderzadeh, Ashtiani's husband, aged 44, was murdered by electrocution by his cousin Isa Taheri.On May 15, 2006 Sakineh pleaded guilty for having an "illicit relationship outside marriage". If a person pleads guilty to adultery under Islamic law, the sentence may be either death by stoning or 100 lashes. The court handed down a punishment of 100 lashes, her son watched the whipping.
Ashtiani had allegedly committed adultery
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
with the man (Isa Taheri) who murdered her husband. Taheri was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Under Islamic law, murder must be absolved by diyya
Diyya
Diyya is compensation paid to the heirs of a victim. In Arabic, the word means both blood money and ransom.-Islamic and Arab tradition:The Qur'an specifies the principle of Qisas Diyya (plural: Diyyat; ) is compensation paid to the heirs of a victim. In Arabic, the word means both blood money and...
(blood money given to victim's family) or qisas
Qisas
Qisas is an Islamic term meaning "retaliation," and follows the principle of an eye for an eye, or lex talionis, first set forth by Hammurabi, and subsequently included in the Old Testament and later legal codes...
(retributive execution); Ashtiani's children chose to accept diyya. Taheri was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment. According to some sources, he is now no longer in prison.
In September 2006, her case was brought up again, where she was tried for adultery and murder. She was found not guilty of murder, but found guilty of being complicity in murder, and given 10 years imprisonment in Tabriz Prison. She told the court that she had pleaded guilty earlier, but then recanted her confession in front of the court. In Iran, if a person is found guilty of adultery without a guilty plea, the death penalty is mandatory. She was convicted of adultery once again, and this time was sentenced to death by stoning
Stoning
Stoning, or lapidation, is a form of capital punishment whereby a group throws stones at a person until the person dies. No individual among the group can be identified as the one who kills the subject, yet everyone involved plainly bears some degree of moral culpability. This is in contrast to the...
. Ashtiani may have had difficulty understanding the case because she speaks Azeri and not Farsi
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
. Malek Ejdar Sharifi, head of East Azerbaijan Province's judiciary said, "She was sentenced to capital punishment
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
... for committing murder, manslaughter and adultery." However, according to advocacy group Mission Free Iran, this is contrary to the documentation on Ashtiani's case. Iran's Supreme Court confimred her death sentence in 2007. Her request for an offical pardon was turned down by the offical "Amnesty and Pardons Commission" of Iran soon afterward. .
Renewed developments
In mid 2010, Ashtiani became the subject of an international campaign, prompting renewed developments in her case.The Press Section of the Iranian Embassy in London, issued the following statement on July 8, 2010: "Considering the statements made by the Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt
Alistair Burt
Alistair James Hendrie Burt is a British Conservative Party politician. He is the Member of Parliament for North East Bedfordshire...
on an Iranian national, Mrs Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, and her execution, hereby this mission denies the false news aired in this respect and notifies the Ministry that according to information from the relevant judicial authorities in Iran, she will not be executed by stoning punishment."
By July 9, 2010, the Iranian government banned reporters in Iran from reporting on any details of the case. One of her lawyers, Mohammed Mostafaei, fled the country when he was charged with financial fraud. Mostafaei stated that he was being harassed for defending his client, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. Mostafaei sought asylum
Right of asylum
Right of asylum is an ancient juridical notion, under which a person persecuted for political opinions or religious beliefs in his or her own country may be protected by another sovereign authority, a foreign country, or church sanctuaries...
internationally, first in Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, and then Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, where he was reunited with his family on September 2, 2010.
On August 4, 2010, the Iranian authorities told Ashtiani's lawyer, Houtan Kian, that she faces death by hanging
Hanging
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...
. On the same day, Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...
's High Court rejected a reopening of the trial and instead considered the Tabriz prosecutor's demand to execute Ashtiani. Her case was subsequently transferred to the deputy prosecutor-general Saeed Mortazavi
Saeed Mortazavi
Saeed Murtazavi is a controversial Iranian jurist and former prosecutor of the Islamic Revolutionary Court, and Prosecutor General of Tehran, a position he has held from 2003 to 2009. He has been called as "butcher of the press" and "torturer of Tehran" by some observers...
. Ashtiani's son was told that the file on his father's murder case has been lost. Her son added that "they are lying about the charges against my mother. She was acquitted
Acquittal
In the common law tradition, an acquittal formally certifies the accused is free from the charge of an offense, as far as the criminal law is concerned. This is so even where the prosecution is abandoned nolle prosequi...
of murdering my father but now the government is building up their own story against her". Her son's statement is contradicted by numerous Iranian news accounts describing her as being convicted of both murder and adultery.
On August 12, 2010, Ashtiani was televised from Tabriz prison on an Iranian state-run television program which showed her confessing in native Azerbaijani language
Azerbaijani language
Azerbaijani or Azeri or Torki is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia by the Azerbaijani people, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...
to adultery and involvement with the murder of her husband once again. Her lawyer alleged she was torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
d for two days prior to the interview.
On August 28, Ashtiani was given the 24-hour notice that she was to be hanged at dawn the next day. She wrote her last will and testament just before the call to morning prayer at 4:00 AM local time, when she expected to be led to the gallows at Tabriz Prison. However the sentence was stayed. It may have been a mock execution. Also on August 28, 2010, British newspaper The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
published a photograph of an unveiled woman, identified as Ashtiani; the photograph had been provided to the Times by her former lawyer Mohammed Mostafaei.
On September 2, 2010, Ashtiani's son and current lawyer reported that she had been additionally convicted of "spreading corruption and indecency" for appearing unveiled and sentenced to 99 lashes. The Times subsequently reported that the photograph was not of Mrs. Ashtiani, but of Susan Hejrat, an Iranian activist living in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
. Western newspapers said Ashtiani was then subjected to another round of 99 lashes, predicated on the mistaken photograph. However, Ashtiani was again shown on Iranian television on September 15, 2010, where she clarified that she had not been tortured and had not been whipped as a result of The Times photograph. The punishment for adultery is 100 lashes, and the maximum possible punishment for appearing unveiled is 74 lashes.
Suspension of the stoning sentence
On September 8, 2010, Ramin Mehmanparast, a spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, confirmed that the government had suspended the stoning sentence pending a review of her husband's murder case. Isa Taheri was found guilty and convicted, and received 10 years' imprisonment after Ashtiani's children forgave him, sparing him the death sentence. He had been found guilty of complicity in murder in 2006, and received 10 years in jail.Following vociferous domestic and international controversy and outcry over stoning in the early years of the Islamic republic, the government placed a moratorium on stoning in 2002. In 2008, Iran's judiciary decided to submit a new draft penal code to parliament for approval. In January 2005, a spokesman for Iran's judiciary, Jamal Karimirad, was quoted as saying "Stoning has been dropped from the penal code for a long time, and in the Islamic republic, we do not see such punishments being carried out", further adding that if stoning sentences were passed by lower courts, they were over-ruled by higher courts and "no such verdicts have been carried out". In 2008, Iran's judiciary scrapped stoning in draft legislation submitted to parliament for approval. As of June 2009, Iran's parliament has been reviewing and revising the Islamic penal code to omit stoning.
Mehmanparast added, that she was guilty of both adultery and murder and that her case was undeserving of the international attention it had drawn. He said that releasing murderers should not be made into a human rights issue and called on countries criticising Iran to release all their murderers as well. According to the human rights organisation Iran Human Rights
Iran Human Rights
is an international non-profit human rights organization founded probably in 2007. The main focus of Iran Human Rights is human rights violations such as death penalty in genereal and death penalty to minor offenders in particular in Iran. Delara Darabi, , , and Sakineh Ashtiani are among the...
, Ashtiani remains in danger of capital punishment by hanging.
Iran Human Rights also expressed its concerns over Mehmanparast's statement about "Sakineh's murder charge being investigated for the final verdict". Commenting on this statement, the spokesperson of Iran Human Rights
Iran Human Rights
is an international non-profit human rights organization founded probably in 2007. The main focus of Iran Human Rights is human rights violations such as death penalty in genereal and death penalty to minor offenders in particular in Iran. Delara Darabi, , , and Sakineh Ashtiani are among the...
, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, possibly Amiri-Moghadam, is a Norwegian-Iranian neuroscientist and human rights advocate.Amiry-Moghaddam spent his first few years in the city of Kerman about 1000 kilometers south-east of Tehran in Iran...
, said: "The fact that the authorities are mentioning murder charges now, could mean that Ashtiani is in danger of being sentenced to death for murder". France's Foreign Minister, according to Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
reported that, based on a telephone call to his Iranian counterpart, Ashtiani's hanging might be called off. A human rights group claimed that Ashtiani was sentenced to be hanged on November 3, 2010; this never materialized, and Iranian authorities clarified that Ashtiani was "held in the prison of Tabriz and in perfect health."
Her son was arrested in October 2010, after speaking to two German
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
reporters, who had entered the country on tourist visas. He was released on $40,000 bail in December. On January 1, 2011, he was shown on television admitting he did not doubt his mother was guilty... but urged Iranian authorities to let her live. He also said it was unfair that Isa Taheri was free. Press TV
Press TV
Press TV is a 24-hour English language global news network owned by the Iranian government. Its headquarters are located in Tehran, Iran, with bureaux in Beirut , Damascus , London , Seoul and Washington DC ....
reported that the deceased husband's "next of kin waived their right to retribution", (see diyya
Diyya
Diyya is compensation paid to the heirs of a victim. In Arabic, the word means both blood money and ransom.-Islamic and Arab tradition:The Qur'an specifies the principle of Qisas Diyya (plural: Diyyat; ) is compensation paid to the heirs of a victim. In Arabic, the word means both blood money and...
and qisas
Qisas
Qisas is an Islamic term meaning "retaliation," and follows the principle of an eye for an eye, or lex talionis, first set forth by Hammurabi, and subsequently included in the Old Testament and later legal codes...
) and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
There have been some cases of political prisoners confessing on live television under torture or extreme pressure in Iran. It is not clear certain if this was such a case or not.
International campaign
Mrs. Ashtiani's two children began a campaign to overturn their mother's conviction. In June 2010, they wrote a letter to the world asking for help to save their mother, which was then first published on June 26, 2010, by Mission Free Iran's International Committee against Stoning. The letter brought widespread attention in 2010 as a result of grassroots campaigning through social networking sites that led to the letter's being passed along to mainstream mass media.During July 2010, protests occurred in Rome, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, among other cities. Calls to stop her execution came from leading human rights groups Avaaz
Avaaz.org
Avaaz.org is a global civic organization launched in January 2007 that promotes activism on issues such as climate change, human rights, corruption, poverty, and conflict...
, Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
and Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
as well as from several high-profile celebrities. A petition was created in support of her release, and has been signed by several additional prominent activists.
On July 31, 2010, the president of Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , known popularly as Lula, served as the 35th President of Brazil from 2003 to 2010.A founding member of the Workers' Party , he ran for President three times unsuccessfully, first in the 1989 election. Lula achieved victory in the 2002 election, and was inaugurated as...
, said he would ask the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to send Mrs. Ashtiani to Brazil, where she would be granted asylum. According to the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, the Brazilian ambassador in Tehran was directly instructed to communicate their asylum proposal to the Iranian government. Iranian officials responded by suggesting that Lula had "not received enough information about the case". U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is the 67th United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama. She was a United States Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009. As the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, she was the First Lady of the...
mentioned Mrs. Ashtiani in a declaration on August 10, 2010, urging Iran to respect the fundamental freedoms of its citizens.
In late August 2010, the Iranian newspaper Kayhan
Kayhan
Kayhan is an influential newspaper in Iran. Directly under the supervision of the Office of the Supreme Leader, it is regarded to be "the most conservative Iranian newspaper."...
called Carla Bruni-Sarkozy
Carla Bruni
Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is an Italian-French songwriter, singer, actress, and former model...
, the First Lady of France, a "prostitute" who "deserved death" after she condemned the stoning sentence against Mrs. Ashtiani. Iranian officials condemned this statement and Ahmadinejad condemned Kayhan's comments toward Mrs. Bruni-Sarkozy's as a "crime" and "against Islam" .
A resolution by the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
on September 8, 2010, declared that "a sentence of death by stoning can never be justified". The vote passed by a margin of 658–1, the sole vote against having been made in error and later rectified, according to the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
. On September 29, 2010, EveryOne Group, a human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
organisation based in Italy, appealed to the Iranian Authorities for an act of compassion for Mrs. Ashtiani.
See also
- Mina AhadiMina AhadiMina Ahadi is an Austrian human rights activist. As an Iranian born Communist political activist she is a current member of the Central Committee and Politburo of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran....
- Marina NematMarina NematMarina Nemat is the author of a memoir about growing up in Iran, serving time in Evin Prison for speaking out against the Iranian government, escaping a death sentence and finally fleeing Iran for a new life in Canada.-Life:...
- Capital punishment in IranCapital punishment in IranCapital punishment is legal and applied in Iran. In theory the possibility of capital punishment applies for the following crimes: murder, rape, adultery, pedophilia, sodomy, drug trafficking, moharebeh and mofsed-e-filarz...
- The Stoning of Soraya M.The Stoning of Soraya M.The Stoning of Soraya M. is a 2008 American drama film adapted from French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam's 1990 book La Femme Lapidée, based on a true story...
(film) - RajmRajmRajm is an Arabic word that means "stoning". It is commonly used to refer to the Hudud punishment wherein an organized group throws stones at a convicted individual until that person dies. Traditionally it is called for in cases of adultery where the criteria for conviction are met...