IRAN: Courts confirm two more stoning sentences on adultery charges

Amid the controversy and international outcry sparked by the stoning sentence handed down to a 43-year-old Iranian mother of two, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, Iran's supreme court reportedly has sentenced two more people to stoning on charges of adultery.

The court's decision came just days after the Iranian judiciary revealed fresh details about Ashtiani's case. 

According to Iran's Human Rights Activists News Agency, the court approved on Aug. 28 a verdict of stoning to death for Vali Janfeshani and Sariyeh Ebadi, convicted of having an extramarital affair.

Janfeshani and Ebadi have been held in the central prison of Orumiyeh in Iran's West Azarbaijan governorate since 2008, according to HRANA. The group said the sentences came out of a "vague and ambiguous judicial process" and that Janfeshani and Ebadi were not granted the right to choose their own defense lawyers. 

The decree of death by stoning for Ashtiani, a sentence that Iran appears uncertain about carrying out, has sparked international anger and drawn widespread criticism of the Islamic Republic. Over the past weeks, human-rights activists have staged demonstrations in dozens of international cities against the sentencing. 

Iran lashed back, reportedly telling Western nations not to stick their noses into the matter and that the Islamic Republic would not tolerate interference in the case. A statement by the judiciary that appeared in Iranian newspapers over the weekend said Ashtiani was being executed for the 2005 murder of her husband as well as for having an affair with the killer. Ashtiani's children have insisted she had nothing to do with the slaying.

"Though the judiciary branch is not obliged legally to reveal the content of the dossier prior to the conclusion of the investigation," the statement said, "and each verdict is issued away from any hubbub and any influence from the atmospheric condition ... the human-rights headquarters of the judiciary branch has decided to issue a statement to enlighten the public opinion."

Ashtiani's husband, Ebrahim Qaderzadeh, 44, was found dead on his bathroom floor in a town called Meshkinshahr in northwestern Iran. According to the statement, Ashtiani then confessed to having had an extramarital affair with the killer, Eisa Taheri, and said she had seduced him and tried to convince him to marry her. The judiciary said she also confessed to having planned the murder in collaboration with Taheri. 

The court then sentenced Sakineh to stoning on a charge of adultery based on several articles of the Islamic judiciary code, a verdict endorsed by the supreme court and upheld by the human-rights headquarters of the judiciary, led by the well-connected Mohammad-Javad Larijani, whose brothers include Iran's speaker of parliament and judiciary chief.

A separate court also sentenced Ashtiani to death based on the principle of gheisas, which refers to the biblical concept of an eye for an eye. Meanwhile, Taheri was handed a 10-year sentence, according to the statement. 

A hardline newspaper, Kayhan, described the wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, singer-actress  Carla Bruni, as a "prostitute" for weighing in on the case.

-- Alexandra Sandels in Beirut

Photo: A woman holds a photo of Sakineh Ashtiani at a recent rally in London. Credit: Agence France-Presse 

Comments

[tempo dulu]

This is sad, this is disgraceful - an insult to humanity. Who could condone such barbarity?

[Saint Michael Traveler, San Diego, Ca, USA]

Killing and Legal Consequences:
What do we do in the United States when a wife cahoots with her lover and kills her husband?

Under the religous law:
Deuteronomy 22:22 "If a man is found sleeping with another man's wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die."
Leviticus 20:10 "If a man commits adultery with another man's wife--with the wife of his neighbor--both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death."
But, under the California state law what would or would be done?

[sam]

REPLY. to hussein thank you for your reply i did not think that you were blaming torah, and my reply dont blame the torah was a general remark for those that may wish to blame our torah out of hand for all the wrongs in the world,i was born and grew up in israel and of course learned torah and all the rules and regulations and laws,this was not forced down my throat but was made interesting i wanted to explore and question things and go and have a look at i drove my parents mad i think with questions,but we have to look now as i did ALL those years ago why things were done mainly due to lack of learning people could not count/write and so on,40was used all over the place because it meant a lot, people were lucky if they could count the fingers on both hand and of course if you were a little brighter than the next chap you were looked up to and hsd more standing of course a lot of crime must have taken place and to punish people to the full extent would have left us with even less protection,so laws were relaxed,in favour of hitting an ofender where it hurt most his livestock or other such fines of course people were put to death but you dont kill a man that is needed for defence,and of course varios laws relating to women who went with other men,even laws relating to how much blood a women lost during a month was covered from being sent to a seperate room or being put outside the walls till it had finished and so on,i have stated before i grew up with arab friends and we understood them as they understood us my family and theirs were friends even with all the trouble we lived through,jews and arabs in biblical times would travel together,and the arabs chose to do this they were not forced why because we had comon enemies,and i would think those people would be the same threat as we have today they didn't want the two peoples to get on just the same as when we were children,and nothing will ever change our visit is nearly finished and we are due to go home,and of course nothing will have changed,because the people who want the trouble to keep going will never be happy until all jewish people are dead and we all know this will never happen.but i lok forward to following the la times when i get home as i only came across it on this visit. thank you.

[Keith Richard Radford Jr]

Adultery: People want to make sex laws about kids and blame adulterous relations, when the fact is the world makes to much out of sex period. Take religious groups like Jehovah's Witnesses for example that has their bases of religion in the Muslim faith and the Catholic church that has it's faith based in inequity between sexes as if women should be seen and not heard just like children. Sex is the destination between male and female and not an offence at all if we are open minded enough to except the fact that some are born with both parts and men get pregnant too. Are all like albinos supposed to be murdered because they are born different? Some are born gay and people drift apart for different reason, but we don't need laws to say sex is bad when small children do use sex, like sex, and even get sex through means for their sexual gratification, and will be used by members of the family to use laws to get away with murder, by legal means as if sexual intercourse is the culpret when people are getting life sentences after their wife reports them for changing dippers. Killing someone for sex is setup by people for different reasons and life is just too short for this kind of thinking or law. End sex laws now.

[Frank Sanello]

Death by stoning?

Someone should tell Iran's judiciary that stoning as a form of capital punishment was more appropriate during the Stone Age and in Biblical times. Iran is a sexist, misogynist theocracy that condemns women to death for committing adultery, while male adulterers get off scot free.

It's a shame the Middle East has so much oil vital to the Western world. If the Middle East didn't have huge oil reserves, the U.S. would pay about as much attention to the region as it does to oil-poor nations like Honduras Belize.

Arab oil will run out by the middle of this century, at which time the American government will turns its back on these primitive Cro Magnon throwbacks after they run out of oil and are no longer helpful to America.

Israel, unleashed by the U.S., will end up refereeing internecine murders committed by Muslims against Jews and Christians, Shias against Sunnis, or better yet, why not let the primitive people with a constitution based on Islam's Bible, the Koran, destroy each other, thus ensuring that the security of Israel will never be threatened by these religious zealots who should not be leading an entire nation.

Frank Sanello

[Hussein]

I never blamed the Torah sam, I just stated my opinion based on facts. I do agree with you that some extremist in Iran's judicial system may be abusing the use of this barbaric punishment to fool more radicals to some "cause". But nontheless, this punishment is found no where in the Quran, no where!, but it is found in the Torah. I hope Iran's reforms its capital punishments sometime in the near future. But than again, didn't we sentence someone to death by shooting no less than a few months ago...?
ABG, all I can say is mazil tov

[Iranian woman]

the regime of Iran is the biggest of all evils in today's world.I hope people around the world understand this and also understand that the majority of Iranian people don't support the regime's actions.most of us believe that stoning is barbaric no matter the reason.I doubt any human-being with the least of emotions could support this law,even the religious ones.

btw,Keyhan is basically the regime's newspaper and I never even look at its headlines as it's appalling to no end.apologies to Mr. Sarkozy and his wife.

[M. Varn Chandola]

Stoning executions in general and the Ashtiani case in particular struck such a nerve in me that I wrote the following article: http://rightlegalhelp.net/blog/modern-day-human-sacrifice-iran Unfortunately, even though she may not be stoned, she is still scheduled for execution. I hope that sufficient international exposure concerning her case will compel the Iranian government to release her.

M. Varn Chandola
rightlegalhelp.net

[ABG]

Do us a favor, Hussein, and stick to your own book. We Jews happen to understand that the laws and edicts written in the Torah come from over 3000 years ago. Heck, for my bar mitzvah, I read out of Qi Tetzeh which suggested stoning women who didn't bleed on their wedding night, stoning couples who have affairs, and stoning children who rebel against their parents. My bar mitzvah speech was entitled, "Everybody Must Get Stoned."

But, please, keep deflecting.

[sam]

as i have stated before the job of judges were formed if a judge made a wrong judgement he could end up being punished in the same way as the person he had judged, yes people were on ocasions stoned or caned but punishments were more in the region of fines or other ways of compensation including exile being stoned quickly came to a stop in favour of other forms of punishment,but it seems today the more barbaric the form of punishment the better the radical muslim likes it,so it seems that these type of people fall back on biblical times to try and convince people that their cause is just when infact they are the only people who want to hang on to such an outdated form of control well it may be an idea if this is the way they want to live its time they were now judges and punished in the same fashion jewish people have not used this form of punishment for hundreds of years so why would the islamic murders wish to follow any-thing a jewish person did or did not do so no point trying to blame it on the torah when we are being told by these mindless killers that they are lead by the quran so dont blame the torah for these cowards hiding behind children and under womens skirts may be this is one reason they do not wish women to have minds of their own they would have no where to hide thank you.

[daniel2]

So... the actual killer, and co-adulterer, only gets 10 years. A person would have to be a misogynistic tool not to see something wrong with this picture.

A woman “confesses” under purgatory only knows what terrible mistreatment and threats, so she must be violently and demeaningly put to death in a primitive way meant only to dominate and terrorize other females. The adult male who performed the murder, and certainly was not forced into any sexual relationship (if there even was one), is treated as a superior-- yet hopelessly weak and mindless-- animal who is little responsible for his own criminal actions.

Under totalitarian Islam, powerless women are ruthlessly blamed for virtually every weakness, vice, and even acts of cruelty, of men. It is hard to view these religion tyrannized cultures-- built on superstitious and hateful gender bias, male sexual gluttony, double standards, and barbarous cruelty-- with anything other than shuddering disrespect. The sooner these religious mouthpiece regimes are toppled, the better for human rights.

[RWh]

Religion is the basis for most of the conflict in this world. Look at the comment by Kiumars.
If you hear of anyone calling for more religion in our government just look at what religion has done throughout the centuries.
The framers of our Constitution saw that religion and government needed separation despite what some people are saying today.

[Hussein]

Nowhere does the Qur'an ordain the barbaric punishment of stoning to death! The stoning to death of adulterers is prescribed in the Torah in Leviticus 20. Accordingly to Islam, committing fornication is punishable by flogging 100 times, but at least 4 witnesses are needed to prove the act took place (an almost impossible thing to prove). If an acuser wasn't able to prove his alegations with 4 witnesses, he would be flogged with 80 stripes for slandering the accused (making it even harder for this judgement to take place). In the Torah, a false witness would suffer the punishment which woud have been meted out to the accused if found guilty (Death). In todays world floggin should be substituted with a proportional punishment acceptable in todays world. The koran allows for this. I am surprised many muslim states use Torah law over Sharia law when it comes to adultery.

[danielas]

Only perverted minds coul consider stoning an acceptable and just punishment for any crime committed. And don't involve God in such a barbaric act; God is love, not hate! By killing for punishment, one still becomes a killer! Any form of death penalty is unacceptable.

[Kiumars]

Having read the two previous comments I must admit that I laughed so much that I wetted my pants! What a load of crap arguments! Firstly; if a woman is not happy with the marriage she can divorce the man instead of killing him and sleeping with his murderer! Secondly; everybody seems to be concerned about a killer but ignoring the victim and the Justice!
This is like putting the cart before the horse; the only victim in this affair is the poor man who was murdered not the murderer!
God says stone her to death and I stand by God. If it was not for an-eye-for-an-eye law a few bullies would blind most of the people today. These laws are deterrent and prevent crimes (in most cases); are the man-made laws better than God's law? Let us see where your man-made law for gay marriages will lead you to; meanwhile we stick to the God's Laws!

[Truth]

The play-card shows "No to Stoning" and "No to execution". It does not show "Yes to cheating" and "Yes to Adultery". I am not supporting stoning... But I am supporting for punishment on a crime done.

[duke]

How horrible.. Stoning a person will achieve nothing, except instill fear in others. A nation rule by fear is not a good nation at all... Why don't they turn it around and stone the man for not being able to give their woman enough love so there need not be extra marital affairs. Iran is empowering their men to use accusation as a tool to put fear in their women. Imagine an angry husband threatening to accuse his wife of a crime she didn't commit unless she gave him money for his drink or gambling habits. The killing of another person through horrible death like stoning and hanging is archaic and evil. It says so much about a nation of people who are willing to stand by to let such barbaric action to take place. This is 2010, not 1010. Any countries who do business with Iran or supporting Iran in anyway while this violation of humanity takes places, are equally responsible for such crime. They are willing to sacrifice their humanity for profit or international relations. If Iran treat their people like that, how will they treat their enemies or people they disagree with. What happens to their religious leaders? Don't they have compassion for these women and are their hearts made of stone or something? How can people be religious when at the same time turn away from their humanity?

Ms. Ashtiani is a victim here. A victim of her own family, her community, her country, and her religion. Let's assume she had a relationship (that's still up for debate), but for a person needing to seek love where there's none in her life, one just have to feel so sorry for her. The people who ordered the sentence, the people who will stone her or hang her, were not wrong by her. They don't have a grudge to settle.. It's her god and her conscience, but that is to be judged when her time comes - and definitely not by the men or community that will stone her to death. Just like you mentioned gays.. how has gay relationship harmed them personally? It's discrimination - causing suffering for the things, the way, or the people they hate. It happens every where - even in the United States. People use religion and righteousness as their ticket to hate. Prop 8 in California is a hate vote by people who hate the people they don't understand.

Human all have flaws, but that's not an excuse..

[AmirHossein- Tehran]

I am an Iranian man, and I think more likely I should be categorized as an educated open mind one with sincere respect to Islam sole (which I assume it is actually the common sole of all ethics and religions worldwide).

These days Iran parliament (mostly male committed/selected clerics parliamentarians) are discussing to make an order/law to legalize extra-marriage sex for men (called si-ghe) under this rule only married men could have relationship with single/divorced women without their spouse consent even secretly.
But married women should not even think about extramarriage relationship which could be end up with stoning!!! I THINK IT IS A GENDER DISCRIMINATION ISSUE in addition to human right violation.

Obviously I do not support and admire Ms Ashtiani misconducts on her betraial to her family and her husband at all! (supposed she has admitted her crime) she has behaved in a very bad manner but we must be careful not to respond irrationally unfair to a person crime/misconduct undershade of religion.