Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani (Azerbaijani: Səkinə Məhəmmədi Aştiani, Persian: سکینه محمدی آشتیانی), is an Iranian 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.[1][2][3] Since 2006, she has been imprisoned and under a death sentence in Tabriz, Iran after being convicted of adultery.[4][5] 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.[6] Prominent media sources picked up on the news via interviews with her son, which included information on her stoning sentence.[7] 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.[8] 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,[9] conspiracy,[10] and complicity.[11] 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. She was convicted of murder in 2006 and sentenced to death by hanging, reduced to 10 years imprisonment after her children pardoned her. She was convicted twice of adultery in separate trials and sentenced to death by stoning. [12] [13][14]

As of January 2011, her stoning sentence has been "suspended". She will remain in prison for complicity in murder and disrupting public order until 2016, unless she is paroled sooner.[15]

In December 2011 the Iranian authorities indicate that they intend to go ahead with her execution, but by hanging. [16]

Contents

Biography

She is an ethnic Azeri Iranian woman born ca. 1968 in the rural town of Osku, East Azerbaijan Province, Iran.[17] Sakineh worked outside her home for two years as a kindergarten teacher.[18][19]

Legal Proceedings

Original proceedings

In 2005 Ebrahim Qaderzadeh, Ashtiani's husband, aged 44, was murdered by electrocution by his cousin Isa Taheri.[20]

On May 15, 2006 Sakineh pleaded guilty for having an "illicit relationship outside marriage".[21][22] 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.[23]

Ashtiani had allegedly committed adultery with the man (Isa Taheri) who murdered her husband.[24] 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.[24][25] According to some sources, he is now no longer in prison, although Iranian officials deny this.

In September 2006 her case was brought up again, where she was tried for murdering her husband as well as committing adultery. She was found guilty of murder (qatl-e-amnd) and sentenced to death by hanging. Her sentence was commuted to 10 years in prison in 2007 after her children forgave her (diyya and qisas).[26] In a separate trial for adultery that same year, she told the court that she had pleaded guilty earlier, but then recanted her confession in front of the court.[27] In Iran, if a person is found guilty of adultery (zina-e-mohseneh) 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.[28] Ashtiani may have had difficulty understanding the case[29][30] because she speaks Azeri and not Farsi.[31] Malek Ejdar Sharifi, head of East Azerbaijan Province's judiciary said, "She was sentenced to capital punishment... for committing murder, manslaughter and adultery."[32] However, according to advocacy group Mission Free Iran, this is contrary to the documentation on Ashtiani's case.[33] Iran's Supreme Court confirmed her death sentence in 2007. Her request for an official pardon was turned down by the official "Amnesty and Pardons Commission" of Iran soon afterward. .[25]

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 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."[34]

By July 9, 2010, the Iranian government banned reporters in Iran from reporting on any details of the case.[35] 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.[36][37] Mostafaei sought asylum internationally, first in Turkey, and then Norway, where he was reunited with his family on September 2, 2010.[38]

On August 4, 2010, the Iranian authorities told Ashtiani's lawyer, Houtan Kian, that she faces death by hanging.[39] 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".[40] Her son's statement is contradicted by numerous Iranian news accounts describing her as being convicted of both murder and adultery.[41][42]

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 tortured for two days prior to the interview.[31]

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.[40] 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.[43] 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.[42] The punishment for adultery is 99 lashes, and the maximum possible punishment for appearing unveiled is 74 lashes, casting the accuracy of the story into doubt.

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.[24] He had been found guilty of complicity in murder in 2006, and received 10 years in jail.[41]

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.[44] In 2008, Iran's judiciary decided to submit a new draft penal code to parliament for approval.[45] 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.[46] As of June 2009, Iran's parliament has been reviewing and revising the Islamic penal code to omit stoning.[47]

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.[48] According to the human rights organisation Iran Human Rights, Ashtiani remains in danger of capital punishment by hanging.[49]

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.[50] 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."[51]

Her son was arrested in October 2010, after speaking to two German reporters, who had entered the country on tourist visas.[52][53] He was released on $40,000 bail in December.[52] 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.[52][54] He also said it was unfair that Isa Taheri was free.[52][55] 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.[24]

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.[56] 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 and Washington, D.C., among other cities.[57][58] 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.[59][60][61][62] A petition was created in support of her release, and has been signed by several additional prominent activists.[63]

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.[64] According to the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, the Brazilian ambassador in Tehran was directly instructed to communicate their asylum proposal to the Iranian government.[65] Iranian officials responded by suggesting that Lula had "not received enough information about the case".[66] 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.[67]

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.[68][69] Iranian officials condemned this statement and[70] Ahmadinejad condemned Kayhan's comments toward Mrs. Bruni-Sarkozy's as a "crime" and "against Islam" .[71]

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.[72] 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.[73]

See also

Iran portal
Biography portal

References

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