The Middle East

Iran: International Outcry Prompts Stay of Woman’s Stoning Execution

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Photo: Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. Photo Courtesy of AP.

By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

TEHRAN, Iran – After an outpouring of international condemnation, Iranian authorities have announced that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman convicted of adultery, will not be executed by stoning. It is not yet clear whether her death sentence has been lifted entirely, and there is speculation that Ms. Ashtiani will be hanged instead.

Mohammed Mostafaei, Ms. Ashtiani’s attorney, told The Times: “This is a positive development but nothing is clear yet . . . “There have been cases in Iran of stonings being changed to hangings.”

Ahmad Fatemi of the International Committee against Stoning and Execution, an organization that has campagined for Ms. Ashtiani’s release, said: “It’s a tactical retreat . . . they never expected this kind of pressure, so they want to buy time.”

News of the stay of her execution comes after an international campaign to prevent her death received extensive international media coverage in the past week.

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a forty three-year-old mother of two, has been in prison in Tabriz since 2006. She was sentenced and received ninety-nine lashes in May of 2006 for an “illicit relationship” outside of marriage.

In September of 2o06 another court reopened her adultery case amid allegations that she was involved in the murder of her husband.  She was cleared of all charges implicating her in the murder, but the second judge sentenced her again on the adultery charges – this time to death by stoning. The penalty was handed down on the basis of “judge’s knowledge.” This is a legal loophole that allows for subjective judicial rulings where no conclusive evidence is present.

Although Ms. Ashtiani retracted a confession which she was forced to make under duress, she was still found guilty.

Under Iran’s version of sharia law, sex before marriage is punishable by 100 lashes, while adultery carries a penalty of death by stoning. Convicted persons, who are almost entirely women, are buried up to their necks and stoned. If the convicted person can pull free from the pit during the stoning, the sentence will be commuted.  Men, who are only buried to their waists, are more likely to escape.

Photo: An execution by stoning which occurred after the Iranian Revolution. Photo Courtesy of Amnesty International.
Photo: An execution by stoning which occurred after the Iranian Revolution. Photo Courtesy of Amnesty International.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague told BBC that the sentence of stoning was a “medieval punishment.” He added: “If the punishment is carried out, it will disgust and appal the watching world.” 

For more information, please see:

BBC – Iran woman escapes stoning death for adultery – 9 July 2010

CNN – Iran denying woman will be executed by stoning – 9 July 2010

MailOnline –  Iran backs down: World fury forces Tehran to spare ‘adulterous’ mother from being stoned – but will they hang her instead? – 9 July 2010

 The Guardian – Iran halts woman’s death by stoning – 8 July 2010
 

Ailing Tunisian TV Journalist Sentenced to Prison for Reporting Protests

By Alyxandra Stanczak
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

Fahem Boukadous Reporting - Image courtesy of Dublin City University Journalism Society
Fahem Boukadous Reporting – Image courtesy of Dublin City University Journalism Society

TUNIS, Tunisia –Fahem Boukadous, a television journalist for the Tunisian station Al-Hiwar al-Tunisi, was sentenced to four years in jail for reporting information which the government claims threatened public order. He was also convicted on charges that he belonged to a criminal organization. These charges were brought against Boukadous after he reported on violent labor protests caused by high unemployment rates, high costs of living, and corruption in Tunisia’s Gafsa mining region in 2008.

Boukadous, who has been hospitalized with severe asthma, was tried in absentia. Tunisian authorities reportedly tried to pressure hospital staff to release him so that he could be present for his trial.

He is the third Tunisian journalist to be sentenced to prison in less than ten months. The two other journalists imprisoned, Zouhair Makhlouf and Taoufik Ben Brik, were sentenced to three and six months in jail respectively.

The Tunisian government is considered to be relatively progressive on a variety of other social issues, such as women’s rights. However, the government still retains strict control over the media and maintains a strong police presence in the nation.

The lobbying group, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), has condemned the court’s decision, and has stated that Boukadous was being punished for “reporting the news.”  Additionally, CPJ’s Deputy Director Robert Mahoney called on “Tunisian authorities [to] halt their constant harassment of independent and critical journalists.”

Because of Boukadous’ health, he has been allowed to remain in the hospital pending the result of his appeal. The court, however, has refused to delay the appeal despite a doctor’s certificate explaining his respiratory problems and hospitalization.

Mohamed Abbou, his lawyer, said he feared that Boukadous could be arrested and taken from the hospital “at any moment.”

For more information, please see:

Associated Press – Court upholds sentence for Tunisian Journalist – 7 July 2010

BBC News – Tunisia to jail sick journalist Fahem Boukadous – 7 July 2010

CPJ – CPJ condemns prison term against Tunisian TV journalist – 6 July 2010

Execution of Juvenile Offender Scheduled for Tomorrow in Iran

by Warren Popp
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

TEHRAN, Iran – On the fourth of July, Iranian authorities delivered a notice to the parents of Mohammad Reza Haddadi, informing them that they should plan their final visit to see their son because he is scheduled to be executed by hanging just three days later, on the seventh of July.

Mohammad Rexa Haddadi may be executed by hanging as ealy as tomorrow morning for a crime allegedly commited at age fifteen. (Photo Courtesy of Stop Child Executions)
Mohammad Rexa Haddadi may be executed by hanging as ealy as tomorrow morning for a crime allegedly commited at the age of fifteen. (Photo Courtesy of Stop Child Executions)

Haddadi was given a death sentence in January 2004 for the 2003 murder of a man who purportedly offered Haddadi and his co-defendants (all above the age of majority) a ride in his car. He reportedly confessed to the commission of the murder, but then retracted his confession during trial, claiming that he had confessed to the killing because his two co-defendants had offered his family money.

His co-defendants later withdrew their testimony, which had initially implicated him in the murder. In spite of these developments, a branch of the Iranian Supreme Court upheld his death sentence. The head of Iran’s Judiciary, Ayatollah Shahroudi, then reaffirmed this decision.

Haddadi was first scheduled to be executed in October 2008, but the execution was stayed by the Head of the Judiciary. His execution was stayed two more times, but only after his family, on each occasion, received notice that they should visit him one final time. The organization, Stop Child Executions, claims that Haddadi’s father  told reporters that Haddadi’s sister set herself on fire due to the anguish of knowing that her brother might be executed, and she is now crippled for life and in the hospital. His mother has also been seriously ill.

Haddadi is scheduled to die by hanging tomorrow for a crime he allegedly committed when he was only fifteen years old. His father claims he was even younger at the time—three months shy of his fifteenth birthday. Human Rights Watch says that Iran’s interpretation and use of Sharia law in its Civil Code defines the age of majority as puberty, which is defined as fifteen lunar years (fourteen and five months) for boys and nine lunar years (eight years and eight months) for girls. Judges are thus allowed to sentence children as adults beginning at these ages. While Haddadi’s execution may be legal under Iranian law, Iran is a party to two major international treaties that prohibit the execution of juvenile offenders when the crimes were committed when the alleged offenders were under eighteen years of age: These treaties are the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Other recent executions of minors include the tenth of June hanging of Mohammad Hassanzadeh, age seventeen, who was convicted of an alleged murder when he was only fourteen to fifteen-years-old, and the highly publicized execution last May of a twenty-three-year-old woman, Delara Darabi, who had allegedly committed a murder while she was seventeen years old. While Darabi had confessed to the murder, she retracted her confession, claiming that she made it after her nineteen year-old boyfriend told her that she could not be executed because she was a minor.

Tehran continues to maintain that the death penalty is an effective deterrent, which is carried out only after the completion of an exhaustive judicial process.

According to Human Rights Watch, Iran continues to be the World’s leader in the number of executions of juvenile offenders. Human Rights Watch claims that Iran executed at least four juvenile offenders in 2009, eight in 2008, and that human rights lawyers in Iran believe that more than a hundred juvenile offenders are currently on death row. Moreover, Iran is now only one of four other countries, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan, and Yemen, that are known to have executed juvenile offenders since 2005.

“Regardless of guilt or innocence, no one should be executed for a crime committed as a child,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The Iranian judiciary should show Haddadi mercy and abide by Iran’s international obligations banning executions for crimes committed by children.”

For more information, please see:

Human Rights Watch – Iran: Rescind Execution Order of Juvenile Offender – 6 July 2010

Stop Child Executions – URGENT: Mohammad Reza Haddadi Scheduled for Execution in Over 24 Hours – 6 July 2010

Amnesty International – Document – Iran: Further Information: Juvenile Offender’s Execution Scheduled: Mohammad Reza Haddadi – 5 July 2010

Iran Human Rights – Another Minor “Offender” in Imminent Risk of Execution at the Sanandaj Prison – 18 June 2010

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – Iran Executes Woman Convicted Of Crime as a Minor – 1 May 2009

Iranian Mother of Two Sentenced to Stoning Death for Adultery Conviction – Sentence Could be Carried out at any Time

By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East Desk
 

Photo: Selekineh, / Photo Courtesy of The Daily News
Photo: Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the forty three-year-old mother of two who has been sentenced to death by stoning. (Photo Courtesy of The Daily Mail)

TABRIZ, Iran – A forty three-year-old Iranian woman faces a sentence of death by stoning unless an international campaign, launched by her children, is successful in persuading Iranian authorities to overturn her conviction or commute her sentence.

In May 2006 Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was convicted of conducting an “illicit relationship outside marriage.” This conviction resulted in a sentence of ninety-nine lashes, which was carried out in 2006.

Sakineh’s case was later reopened when a court in Tabriz suspected her of murdering her husband. Although she was acquitted of the murder charges, the court reopened and reviewed the adultery case, and handed down the stoning sentence on the basis of a “judge’s knowledge.” This legal loophole in Iran allows judges to hand down subjective rulings where they do no have sufficient conclusive evidence.

Sakineh’s children, son Sajad, twenty-two, and daughter Farideh, seventeen, assert that their mother has been unjustly accused, and has already received punishment for a crime which she did not commit. Sajad said:

“She’s innocent, she’s been there for five years doing nothing . . . 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.”

When Sakineh received ninety-nine lashes in 2006, Sajad was present in the punishment room. “They lashed her just in front of my eyes, this has been carved in my mind since then.”

Sakineh was forced to confess after the lashings. She later retracted her confession, and has claimed no wrongdoing.

The sentence, which emanates from Iranian sharia law, calls for women to be buried up to their neck, and men to be buried up to their waist. Those attending the execution are then called upon to throw stones at the convicted person. The stones used in the execution are selected to be large enough to cause the convicted person pain, but not so large that she would be killed immediately. If the convicted person manages to wrestle free, her death sentence will then be commuted.

 Sakineh’s lawyer, Mohammed Mostafaei, who is an acclaimed Iranian lawyer, wrote a public letter regarding her conviction shortly after her stoning sentence was announced a few months ago. He said:

“This is an absolutely illegal sentence . . . Two of five judges who investigated Sakineh’s case in Tabriz prison concluded that there’s no forensic evidence of adultery.  He added: “According to the law, death sentence and especially stoning, needs explicit evidences and witnesses while in her case, surprisingly, the judge’s knowledge was considered enough.”

Mostafaei also believes that a language barrier prevented Sakineh from fully understanding the court proceedings, as she is of Azerbaijani descent and speaks Turkish, while court proceedings in Iran are conducted in Farsi.

Sakineh’s children have received aid from human rights activist Mina Ahadi, who is based in Germany. Ahadi helped to launch the international campaign to free Sakineh last week. She said that shortly after the campaign was launched, she received phone calls from the families of two other women who are also being held in Tabriz prison. These two women, Azar Bagheri, aged nineteen, and Marian Ghorbanzadeh, aged twenty five, have also been sentenced to death by stoning under adultery convictions.

Ahadi told The Guardian: “Azar was arrested when she was just fifteen.  They couldn’t punish her before she became eighteen years old according to the law, so they waited until now . . . and want to stone her to death.  Ahadi also reports that Azar has been subjected to mock stoning in preparation for the real execution, with partial burial in the ground.

Ahadi stated that she is currently aware of twelve other women in Iran who are sentenced to death by stoning, but estimates that the figure is closer to forty or fifty.

As for Sakineh’s sentence, Ahadi said, “Legally it’s all over … it’s a done deal. Sakineh can be stoned at any minute … That is why we have decided to start a very broad, international public movement. Only that can help.”

She added, “Stoning to death is not simply just a judicial punishment, it’s a political means in the hand of the Iranian regime to threaten people. It has more function than just a simple punishment for them.”

Stoning sentences were widely carried out after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. However, in recent years, Iran has sought to reduce the number of stoning sentences due to the international embarrassment involved, and most people are now executed by hanging.  Nonetheless, stoning sentences are still handed down each year – overwhelmingly to women.

Iranian activists have repeatedly spoken out against stoning saying that it is not prescribed in the Koran.

According to Amnesty International, Iran executed 388 people last year, which is more than any other country except China.  Over 100 people have already been executed in Iran this year. 

For more information, please see:

CNN – Human rights activist tries to stop death by stoning for Iranian woman – 6 July 2010

 UPI – Children fight for woman facing stoning – 3 July 2010

The Daily Mail – ‘Help us save our mother’: Pleas from the children of ‘adulterous’ Iranian woman who faces death by stoning – 2 July 2010

The Guardian – Campaign for Iranian woman facing death by stoning – 2 July 2010

‘Illegal’ Israeli Demolition/Development in East Jerusalem Approved

by Warren Popp
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

If the Committees plan gets final approval, twenty-two Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem will be demolished. (Photo Courtesy of Palestine Monitor)
If the Committee's plan gets final approval, twenty-two Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem will be demolished. (Photo Courtesy of Palestine Monitor)

JERUSALEM, Israel – Last week, the Jerusalem Planning and Building Committee approved an initiative by the mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, to create an Israeli archaeological park in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. The plan has come under both national and international scrutiny because it calls for the demolition of approximately twenty-two Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem. Another sixty-six buildings constructed in the neighborhood without Israeli permission will be legalized under the plan.

In this and past cases where Palestinian homes have been demolished, Israel has maintained that it is simply enforcing the law by destroying illegally built homes and other buildings. However, many of the buildings have gone up without a permit because it is reportedly very difficult for Palestinians to acquire permits, and very few building permits have ever been issued to Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

When Barkat formally submitted the latest version of the development plan, his spokesman said: “Now, after fine-tuning the plan and seeking more cooperation with the residents as far as their needs and improving the quality of their lives, the municipality is ready to submit the plans for the first stage of approval.” However, Jerusalem city hall had reportedly refused to hold talks with the neighborhood’s Palestinian residents over alternative proposals.

The announcement by the Committee came just a day after Israel announced that it will be loosening restriction of aid into Gaza, likely as part of an effort to repair its international standing after the international criticism in response to the Israeli raid of a boat convoy heading to the Gaza strip on 31 May, which resulted in the deaths of nine activists and the injury of dozens more. The latest announcement by the Committee was criticized by Defense Minister Ehud Barak as “bad timing” and poor “common sense.” It was also criticized by the Israeli President, Shimon Peres.

The same development plan had been considered earlier in the year, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure from both the United States—who was attempting to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks—and from increased international pressure regarding its settlement plans in East Jerusalem in general, persuaded Barkat to put the project on hold in March.

While the plan has been approved by the Committee, Israeli officials are stressing that the final process requires the approval of the Interior Ministry, a process that is likely to take several months, and that the plan could still be blocked by the government.

Barkat has defended the development plan, along with other claims of broader housing discrimination against Arabs—especially Palestinians. The Jerusalem Post quotes his spokesman as stating, “Mayor Barkat is moving forward with a master plan for Jerusalem that calls for an additional 50,000 new housing units over the next 20 years to fit the needs of the growing population. Arab residents are approximately one-third of the population of Jerusalem, and as such, we expect a third of those new housing units to be for Arab residents in their neighborhoods.” The spokesman further stated, “In addition, this week’s Municipal Planning and Construction Committee has 41 items on the agenda for approval, 18 of which are plans by Arab residents of Jerusalem for new apartments and construction in Arab neighborhoods.” The Jerusalem Post also reports that the municipality claims it does not keep records of how many local Arab building permits his office has approved since taking office in December 2008.

UN Secretary General, Ban-Ki Moon, publicly stated that the housing development plan is illegal under international law, and the European Union also recently stated its belief that the development plan is illegal. Richard Falk, the Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights on Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 (working in an unpaid and independent capacity), believes, “These actions, if carried out, would violate international law, with certain actions potentially amounting to war crimes under international humanitarian law.”

The United States State Department of State criticized the development plan, stating that it undermined trust between parties, and also increased the risk of violence. With Israeli police and Palestinian youth clashing last Sunday in response to the development plan, it appears that the US concerns were not unfounded. The rising tensions between the parties since the Committee’s announcement resulted in the Palestinian youth throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at police in the same neighborhood where the homes would be demolished, causing minor injuries to six police officers who were hit with stones.

The recent arrest by Israeli police of a Hamas member of parliament for refusing orders that expelled him from Jerusalem also threatens to further escalate tensions in East Jerusalem. Richard Falk cited the four men’s case as part of “a larger, extremely worrying pattern of Israeli efforts to drive Palestinians out of East Jerusalem – [which is] illegal under international law”.

For more information, please see:

Jerusalem Post – An Open City? – 2 July, 2010

Al Jazeera – Israel Arrests Hamas MP – 30 June 2010

Voice of America News – EU Says Israel East Jerusalem Housing Plan Illegal – 30 June 2010

UN News Centre – Demolitions, New Settlements in East Jerusalem Could Amount to War Crimes – UN Expert – 29 June 2010

N.Y. Times – Palestinians and Police Collide in East Jerusalem – 27 June 2010

Haaretz – Reining in Barkat – 25 June, 2010

BBC – UN Chief Says East Jerusalem Demolition Plan ‘illegal’ – 24 June 2010

Sydney Morning Herald – Jerusalem Housing Plans Jeopardise Peace Talks – 24 June 2010

Al Arabiya News Channel – Israel Revives East Jerusalem Housing Plan – 21 June 2010