Iran: Death by stoning ends

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KHOSRO NAZARI IN TEHRAN

IRAN has abolished stoning as a form of capital punishment, an Iranian newspaper reported yesterday, in an apparent bid to ease European Union human rights concerns.

The Bahar daily newspaper quoted Qorbanali Dorri Najafabadi, the former intelligence minister who heads the Supreme Administrative Court, as saying: "The practice has been stopped for a while."

The newspaper also cited a reformist parliamentarian as saying the head of the judiciary had sent a directive to judges instructing them to stop issuing death verdicts by stoning.

"To the best of my knowledge, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi has ordered that execution by stoning should be stopped," said Jamileh Kadivar.

Under Iran’s strict Islamic law, in place since the 1979 Islamic revolution, men and women convicted of adultery are normally sentenced to death by stoning. The condemned are buried in a pit - men up to their waists, women their armpits - and pelted.

Under the law, the stones must be big enough to injure but not kill with just a few blows. Victims who can dig themselves out are acquitted.

Officials refuse to say how often stonings occur, but at least two women were reportedly stoned to death last year.

-- Anonymous, December 27, 2002


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