In an interview published on the website of the French magazine La Regle du Jeu and the blog Dentelles et Tchador, Mohammadi-Ashtiani’s son Sajjad said they learned of the new punishment from released inmates.
He said that a prison judge confirmed that she was to be lashed for spreading “corruption and indecency” by the publication of a photograph of her without a headscarf that appeared in a British newspaper.
The Times of London published on August 28 a photo of a woman without a headscarf that it said was Mohammadi-Ashtiani, however on September 3 it said the attribution of the photo, which it received from one of her lawyers that has fled Iran, was incorrect.
The photo “… is certainly not that of my mother,” said Sajjad.
Mohammadi-Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two, was given the death penalty for an extramarital relationship.
Iran has subsequently said she was also convicted of being an accomplice in her husband’s death, though she has denied that was the case.
Her plight has prompted protests in Europe and an international campaign to spare her. Tehran has provisionally suspended the death sentence.
