Iran has reportedly sentenced Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani — the 43-year-old Iranian woman who faces execution after being convicted of adultery — to 99 lashes in prison for “spreading corruption and indecency” after allowing an unveiled picture of herself to be published in a British newspaper.
The claim, which could not be confirmed, comes from her family and a lawyer representing Mohammadi Ashtiani, based on reports from those who have recently left the prison in Tabriz where she has been held for the last four years.
The latest charges against Mohammadi Ashtiani — if confirmed — would appear to suggest that the Iranian authorities have been stung by the international outcry her case has attracted through the campaign of her family and supporters in the media, and could be read as a warning that it is Sakineh who could suffer from the campaign.
What has made the latest charges against her even more extraordinary is the fact that the unveiled photograph in question, published by the London-based Times newspaper on Aug. 28, was not actually of Sakineh, but of another woman, for which the paper has since apologized.
Not really her
In reality, the woman pictured was Susan Hejrat, an Iranian political activist living in Sweden whose photograph had been published on a Web site along with an article she had written about Sakineh’s case, perhaps causing the confusion.
In its apology, published on Friday, the Times said that the photograph had been obtained from Mohammad Mostafaei, one of Sakineh’s lawyers, who had claimed that he received the picture from her son, Sajad — which he has denied.
Instead, in an open letter on Saturday, Sajad Ghaderzadeh accused the Iranian authorities of using the mistaken picture as “an excuse to increase their harassment of our mother.”
“My mother has been called in to see the judge in charge of prison misdemeanors, and he has sentenced our helpless mother to 99 lashes on false charges of spreading corruption and indecency by disseminating this picture of a woman presumed to be her [Sakineh] without hijab,” he said on Saturday.
“This news reached us through some prisoners who were released from Tabriz prison recently and have informed my mother’s lawyer, Houtan Kian, that she has been given a sentence of 99 lashes for the alleged unveiled photo of her published in Western media. As far as we know, the sentence of 99 lashes has not been administered yet. Once I got the Times’ apology for the misidentified photo, I instantly informed the lawyer and we are going to ask for an appeal. My mother has been denied visits for the past two weeks, no one has been allowed to visit her, including her family and even her lawyer. She has also been denied access to a phone and we have been completely cut off from her,” he said.
Missing documents
News of the latest punishment came amid reports from the family that they had learned her case has been referred for a judicial review to Branch 9 of Iran’s Supreme Court, which has requested police documents relating to her case, some of which appear to have gone missing. The reports have also emerged amid an increasingly bitter war of words between Iran and Sakineh’s most high-profile supporter, Carla Bruni, the wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was even described as a “prostitute” in one Iranian newspaper because of her intervention.
Mohammadi Ashtiani was first convicted in 2006 of having an “illicit relationship” with two men after the death of her husband and was sentenced by a court to 99 lashes. Later that year she was also convicted of adultery and sentenced to be stoned to death, even though she retracted a confession that she claims was made under duress. Iran lifted that sentence last month, but now says that she has been convicted of involvement in her husband’s killing.
According to the Iranian courts, her husband, Ebrahim Qaderzadeh, 44, was found dead on his bathroom floor in Meshkinshahr, in northwestern Iran. Mohammadi Ashtiani is said by Iranian officials to have confessed to having had an extra-marital affair with the killer, Eisa Taheri, and to have said that she had seduced him. The judiciary has also claimed that she confessed to having planned the murder in collaboration with Taheri, claims that are vigorously denied by her family.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS