AFP: Norway summoned the Iranian ambassador in Oslo on Tuesday to protest against the “barbaric” stoning to death of a man convicted of adultery in northwestern Iran. OSLO, July 10, 2007 (AFP) – Norway summoned the Iranian ambassador in Oslo on Tuesday to protest against the “barbaric” stoning to death of a man convicted of adultery in northwestern Iran.
“I am outraged that the stoning has been carried out and condemn in the strongest possible terms this death sentence,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said in a statement.
“It is a fundamentally inhumane and barbaric punishment.”
The summons follows Tuesday’s confirmation by Iranian authorities that Jafar Kiani had “recently” been executed in the village of Aghche Kand near Takestan, in Qazvin province.
It was the first time in five years that Iran has confirmed a stoning to death took place.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Iranian ambassador Abdol Reza Faraji Rad told Norwegian foreign affairs state secretary Liv Monica Stubholt that the sentence of Kiani’s co-accused, Mokarrameh Ebrahimi, who is also facing death by stoning, would not be carried out.
“He told us (a contact) in the Iranian judiciary said to him the sentence of the woman would not be carried out,” ministry spokesman Frode Overland Andersen told AFP.
“When we asked him whether he meant the sentence would be postponed or that it would be stopped, he could not confirm.”
Rights activists seeking to stop the practice said Kiani had been arrested 11 years ago while living with Ebrahimi. Both were reportedly married to others at the time.
Ebrahimi is still awaiting her sentence in prison in Qazvin city, where she is detained with her two children.
“Norway will work with other countries to strongly invite the Iranian authorities to prevent the stoning (of Ebrahimi) from being carried out,” Gahr Stoere said Tuesday.
Under Iran’s Islamic law, adultery is still theoretically punishable by stoning although in late 2002 judiciary head Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi had issued a directive suspending the practice.
