Stoning adulterers: another provocation from the Iranian regime

Lawyers and human rights organizations are pleading for the life of Asharf Kalhori, accused of adultery and condemned to be stoned. The regime aggravates cruel death penalties to create more tension with the west.

Teheran (AsiaNews) – The lawyer Shadi Sadr in Iran and Amnesty International have launched an urgent appeal: Asharf Kalhori, a mother of four children aged between nine and 19 years, could be stoned any time now for adultery. At the moment, the woman is in Evin prison, where people like the dissident Jahanbegloo and foreigners, Lherbier and Klein, accused of "spying" are also imprisoned.

Asharf must die because she committed adultery. According to international law – and Iran has accepted to submit to this rule – the use of the death penalty, if not abolished, should be reserved for the most serious crimes.

In December 2002, ayatollah Shahroudi, head of the Judiciary, sent a note to judges calling for the suspension of executions by stoning. This measure was presented as the fruit of dialogue on human rights between Iran and the European Union. But it was merely suspension, not abolition: Shahroudi's plan was to give the Supreme Guide Khamenei, some time to modify the law that called for, and continues to call for, death by stoning in cases of adultery.

In September 2003, the official Iranian Gazette published the wording of a law entitled: "Rules of application in sentences of retribution, stoning, killing, crucifixion, execution and flogging". The wording is so crude that it evokes the barbaric tendencies of past times, horrifying Iranians as it would any other human being, especially Christians meditating the Via Crucis. The West then behaved like Pontius Pilate, wanting to hope in the presidency of Khatami, thinking that it would be enough to give Iran time to reform...

As far is as known, except perhaps for two cases in May 2006, so far no one has been stoned in Iran, although sentences – provisionally not applied – have been handed down by judges in the country. According to unofficial estimates, at least 10 women are threatened by this form of violent execution.

Some Iranian lawyers have learned that in these cases, the interventions of international civil society or foreign governments usually serve to shorten the detention period and hasten the execution. The lawyer of Asharf has called on everyone to intervene, although she is aware that stoning is favoured by Iranian extremists as one more provocation against the rest of the world.

• IRAN
• stoning
• human
• rights
• women
• islam