Iran: Woman sentenced to death by stoning

A woman has been sentenced to death by stoning by an Iranian court for her alleged involvement in the murder of her husband. The woman — identified only by the initials A.Kh — was also sentenced to lashings and 25 years in jail.

Jerusalem Post, citing the Persian-language Iranian website LAHIG, reported that the woman was sentenced by the criminal court in the city of Rasht in Gilan province. Two men were also convicted of the murder. While one of them was sentenced to death, the other will have to serve five years in prison.

"Local state media reported the sentencing on Saturday. However the Iranian regime's judiciary has not officially published any information on the verdicts," the National Council of Resistance of Iran said.

"The rate of executions in Iran has not decreased in the last few years, it has increased. Although stoning has become more rare in Iran, such sentences are still being issued by Iranian judges," Maryam Nayeb Yazdi, a leading Canadian-Iranian human rights activist based in Toronto, told the Jerusalem Post.

She added that the probability of the sentence being carried out was slim because of the "international sensitivity of the issue" and that it could be converted to death by hanging.

Julie Lenarz, the executive director of the Human Security Center in the UK, said: "Whether or not one supports the nuclear deal with Iran, it is astonishing that the West cultivates an ever-closer alliance with a theocratic regime widely known for its abysmal human rights record and aggressive behavior in the region. They hang men for the 'crime' of writing poems; or engaging in peaceful protest; or loving someone of the same sex."

"Women are stoned for being raped and Iranian law even allows for juvenile executions. Iran is averaging three hangings per day at the moment and remains a pariah state with no regard for human life. In a despicable form of moral myopia, the gold rush for business, as the international sanctions regime begins to unravel, has made western governments blind to the suffering of ordinary Iranians at the hands of the Ayatollahs," she added.