By Saniya Ghanoui -- July 8, 2010
Human Rights Watch, a campaign group that conducts research and advocacy for human rights, has called for Iran to stop the death-by-stoning of a woman convicted of adultery.
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a mother of two, has already spent five years in prison and has endured flogging after having what the Iranian court called and "illicit relationship."
In May 2006, a court in East Azerbaijan found Ashtiani guilty of having a relationship with two men after the death of her husband and she was given 99 lashes.
Four months later, during the trial of a man accused of murdering her husband, her case was reopened and Ashtiani was convicted of "adultery while being married" based on events that purportedly took place before the death of her husband.
Ashtiani retracted a confession after she said she made it under duress and she continues to deny the adultery charges.
Ashtiani's two children, her son Sajad, 22, and daughter Farideh, 17, said their mother in innocent and the two wrote a letter addressed to the public pleading to "please help our mother return home."
In an interview with London's Guardian newspaper, Sajad said the execution by stoning is barbaric.
"She's innocent, she's been there for five years for doing nothing," said Sajad. "Imagining her, bound inside a deep hole in the ground, stoned to death, has been a nightmare for me and my sister all these years."
Under Iran's law, adultery is punishable by 100 lashes for unmarried people but punishable by death by stoning for married offenders. In cases considered to be morality crimes, judges can use their own "knowledge" to convict someone.
In a statement on the its website, Human Rights Watch researcher Nadya Khalife said this execution, and all executions, should be stopped.
"Death by stoning is always cruel and inhuman, and it is especially abhorrent in cases where judges rely on their own hunches instead of evidence to proclaim a defendant guilty," said Khalife.
Government officials are also calling for the halt of the execution. The British Government says the stoning would "disgust and appall the watching world."
