Iran: Adulterer sentenced to death by stoning escapes pit and is freed

A MAN convicted of adultery has escaped death by stoning in Iran after dragging himself out of the pit he had been buried in for the punishment an act that means he is free under Islamic law. 2 other male adulterers were killed by the barbaric method in the same incident, which took place in the north-eastern city of Mashhad last month.

The stonings were confirmed yesterday by a spokesman for the judiciary, which says it is trying to have the widely condemned punishment abolished. Ali Reza Jamshidi said: "Given that the third person managed to pull himself out of the hole, the verdict was not carried out."

The stonings were in defiance of repeated calls from the international community for the Islamic Republic to abolish the practice.

John Watson, Amnesty International's Scotland programme director, told The Scotsman: "Execution by stoning is a grotesque and unacceptable penalty which Iran should abolish immediately. We urge the authorities to heed our calls and those of the many Iranians who are fighting for an end to this practice."

Preliminary figures from Amnesty indicate that more than 330 people were executed in Iran in 2008.

Under Iranian law the stones must be neither too big nor too small, so that death is neither mercifully quick nor endlessly prolonged. Some stoning victims are said to have taken 20 minutes to die.

Stoning sentences usually imposed for adultery, which is sometimes penalised by flogging were widely carried out in the early years after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, but have been very rare in recent years.

A moratorium on stoning was issued by Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi, head of the judiciary, in 2002. The European Union had made that measure and other human rights reforms a condition for opening negotiations with Iran.

Despite the moratorium, a man convicted of adultery was stoned last year, provoking international outrage. It was the 1st stoning confirmed by Iran's judiciary in 5 years, although rights activists said a man and woman were also stoned to death in 2006.

A group of Iranian lawyers, including Shadi Sadr, a prominent women's rights activist, has been campaigning for years to have stoning as a penalty removed from Iranian law.

But 8 women and 2 men are said to be on death row facing stoning sentences. They are mostly illiterate and from underprivileged backgrounds, and were condemned in the absence of a good defence, rights activists said.

The majority of those stoned are women, who suffer disproportionately from such punishment, human rights groups say. "One reason is that they are not treated equally before the law and the courts, in clear violation of international fair trial standard."

Also, men stoned to death are buried to the waist, while women are buried deeper, to stop the stones from hitting their breasts. This apparent regard for a woman's modesty actually has a negative impact for women. If a prisoner manages to pull free during a stoning, he or she is acquitted or jailed, but is not executed. It is easier for a man to drag himself free because he is not buried so deeply.

Capital offences in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, apostasy, blasphemy, serious drug trafficking, repeated sodomy, treason and espionage.

BACKGROUND

GIVEN the dire punishment of stoning that is sometimes imposed for adultery, high standards are supposedly set for proving the "crime".

4 witnesses to the sexual act are needed. These should be verifiably just men. All four must have witnessed the "crime" simultaneously. Any giving false testimony is subject to lashes.

Confessions by the defendant, repeated four times, can also secure a conviction, but few confess, knowing they could be stoned for doing so. A confession is also null and void if a person later disavows it.

But Iranian rights activists say confessions have been extracted under duress and later disavowals rejected.

Iranian activists against stoning say it is not prescribed in the Koran.

Source: The Scotsman, January 15, 2009