Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Apr. 23 – A man was secretly stoned to death in northern Iran in February and another man is only days away from facing a similar fate, a Tehran-based online daily reported on Wednesday.
Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Apr. 23 – A man was secretly stoned to death in northern Iran in February and another man is only days away from facing a similar fate, a Tehran-based online daily reported on Wednesday.
The report by Rooz, which is run by former officials, said that in the case of the man who was stoned in the city of Rasht in February, judicial sources did not hand over the body to his family for burial to keep details of his execution from leaking to the press.
The main opposition coalition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, citing ‘reliable sources’, had on 11 March said a man, identifed as Vali Azad, 30, was 'secretly' stoned to death in a prison in Rasht. It said that the stoning sentence, handed down by Judge Kashani, was carried out in a remote part of the yard of Lakan Prison in the presence of a few prison officials.
Rooz reported that another stoning sentence will be carried out in the coming days in Rasht.
The judiciary in Gilan Province (northern Iran) is getting ready to carry out the sentence, which is a serious cause for concern among human rights activists, the report said.
It identified the man awaiting the sentence as Mohammad Ali Navid Khamami.
Under Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, adultery by a married woman is punishable by stoning. The law is very specific about the manner of execution and types of stones which should be used. Article 102 states that men will be buried up to their waists and women up to their breasts for the purpose of execution by stoning. Article 104 states, with reference to the penalty for adultery, that the stones used should “not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes, nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones”.
