AFP: The Iranian judiciary has yet to confirm any stay of implementation of a sentence of stoning handed down against a woman convicted of adultery, her lawyer told AFP on Friday.
TEHRAN, July 9, 2010 (AFP) – The Iranian judiciary has yet to confirm any stay of implementation of a sentence of stoning handed down against a woman convicted of adultery, her lawyer told AFP on Friday.
The comments from Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani’s counsel, Mohammad Mostafavi, came after assurances from the Iranian embassy in London that his client would not face the original sentence amid a Western outcry.
“I have yet to be told of any stay in implementation of the sentence,” the defence lawyer told AFP by telephone. “My client remains in prison.”
Iran’s London embassy said in a statement reported by The Times on Friday that “according to information from the relevant judicial authorities in Iran, (Mohammadi-Ashtiani) will not be executed by stoning.”
The embassy did not elaborate on whether her conviction had been quashed or the sentence had been commuted to an alternative form of capital punishment — in Iran, normally hanging from a crane inside prison walls.
Her defence lawyer bemoaned the ambiguities of the embassy statement. “It didn’t say the verdict had been overturned, so is she going to face some alternative punishment, is she going to be released or will there be a retrial?” he asked.
Mohammadi-Ashtiani, 43, was convicted in 2006 or 2007 and has already received 99 lashes, London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International said.
Britain and the United States have led international condemnation of the sentence to death by stoning.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague on Thursday labelled the punishment “mediaeval”, saying it would “disgust and appall” the rest of the world.
