Mon, Jan 03, 2011 page6

• Ashtiani’s son seeks commutation

  • AP AND AFP. TABRIZ, IRAN
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  The son of an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery demanded on Saturday that his mother’s verdict be commuted.

  In his first public meeting with journalists, Sajjad Qaderzadeh told reporters in the northwest city of Tabriz that he had been freed on Dec. 12 after posting US$40,000 bail and now wants to devote his life to saving his mother.

  “We lost our father and we don’t want to lose our mother. We demand that her verdict be commuted,” Qaderzadeh told reporters.

  He was originally arrested in October after speaking with two German journalists about his mother’s case. The Germans were also arrested and remain in custody.

  Several unidentified people, apparently local officials and possibly plainclothes security officers, were present during the interview, which was Qaderzadeh’s first with the international press.

  He said he was arrested because the German journalists broke the law by entering the country on tourist visas and then reporting, but it was not clear if he was ever charged.

  Later on Saturday, journalists were allowed to briefly meet Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who again confessed to being an accomplice in the murder of her husband, while maintaining that it was her lover, Isa Taheri, who did the actual killing.

  “Taheri came to our house and scuffled with my husband. He told me to give the injection he had already prepared,” she told reporters after she had dinner with her son.

  Ashtiani denied that she was ever tortured during her imprisonment, as had been alleged by her former lawyer Mohammed Mostafaei.

  She also said she would sue the German journalists.

  “I have told Sajjad ... to sue the ones who have disgraced me and the country,” Ashtiani said.

  She named those she wants to sue as “the two Germans,” Mostafaie, Germany-based anti-stoning campaigner Mina Ahadi and her husband’s murderer Taheri.

  “I have a complaint against them,” she said.

  Ashtiani was convicted of adultery in 2006 after the murder of her husband and sentenced to death by stoning. In the face of international outrage, the sentence has been suspended and is under review by the Iranian Supreme Court.

  She was later convicted of being an accessory to her husband’s murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison, her son said.

  In the wake of the international outcry over the verdict, the Iranian government has been at pains to show that Ashtiani is guilty, airing several interviews with her repeatedly confessing her crimes.

  Qaderzadeh told journalists that he didn’t doubt his mother was guilty, but he asked that her stoning sentence be commuted.

  “I do not think that my mother is innocent. She is certainly guilty,” he said. “However, the decision has to be made by our country’s officials. They may change the stoning sentence to some other verdict.”

  Qaderzadeh said it was not fair that his mother was in jail, but that the man who murdered his father, Isa Taheri, was free.

  “The question is why Taheri is free? ... I’ll get Taheri to face justice even if I need to become a lawyer or memorize the book of law,” he said.

  Stoning was widely imposed in the years following the 1979 Islamic revolution and even though Iran’s judiciary still regularly hands down such sentences, they are often converted to other punishments.
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