Iran Human Rights: "Keep Up The Pressure"

Regarding the stoning sentence of Sakineh Ashtiani:
The world must keep up the pressure
Friday 9 July 2010
[from: Iran Human Rights website]

Iran Human Rights, July 9: According to a statement from the Iranian embassy in London, the 43 year old Iranian woman Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani will not be stoned to death.

"According to information from relevant judicial authorities in Iran, she will not be execut

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ed by stoning punishment," the embassy said in the statement carried by The Guardian.

The statement also says: "It is notable that this kind of punishment has rarely been implemented in Iran and various means and remedies must be probed and exhausted [by the judiciary] to finally come up with such a punishment,".

Neither Iranian judiciary or Sakineh’s lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei have confirmed this news.

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the spokesperson of Iran Human Rights, urged the international community to keep the pressure on the Iranian authorities untill the stoning verdict has been removed. He said: "As long as she has a stoning verdict, and as long as death by stoning is part of the Iranian penal law, Sakineh and others sentenced to death by stoning could be stoned to death".

Amiry-Moghaddam added: " Unlike what the Iranian embassy in London claims, stoning has been implemented in Iran every year in the past years. On on 9th of July 2007, exactly three years ago, Jafar Kiani was stoned to death in a village outside Qazvin, two weeks after his stoning sentence was halted due to international pressure. According to the Official Iranian media two people were stoned to death in 2008 and one man was stoned to death in 2009. We have other cases where a person sentenced to death by stoning has been hanged instead".

"The world community must keep up the perssure on the Iranian authorities as long as the stoning verdicts of Sakineh and other people in the Iranian prisons have not been removed" ended Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.

[The photo is a still from the movie "The Stoning of Soraya M." I found this particular pic at pingounica.com.]