<<Back
October 15, 2006 VOLUME 29
E-ZAN VOICE OF WOMEN AGAINST FUNDAMENTALISM IN IRAN
To our readers,
While seven women are facing stoning
in Iran, Anousheh Ansari becomes the first Iranian
woman to travel the space for $20 million.
Alas! One would hope equal media or
public attention was given to the status of those women facing stoning in Iran.
E-Zan Featured Headlines
WFAFI News– September 16, 2006
Iran’s Education Ministry
announced that girls’ school will become no-male zone with the new academic year.
This means male teachers who were allowed to teach at the high school level are
no longer allowed to report to work. Such measures were adopted to “reduce
contact between female students and male teachers”. In an interview, Mr.
Harati, the Deputy Minister of Education, admits that “we have not conducted an
assessment to see the impact of lack of teachers in various schools throughout
the country”. “Regardless, we will proceed by eliminating male teachers from
women’s high schools.”
Iran Focus – September 19, 2006
Hundreds of Iranian women gathered
outside the offices of the judiciary in Tehran on Tuesday in protest to the
impending execution of a female prisoner, dissidents have told Iran Focus.
Dozens of protesting women were arrested outside the judiciary as they clashed
with armed agents of Iran’s State Security Forces (SSF) and
its undercover units. Agents of the SSF sealed off the area, and motorbike
patrols roamed the vicinity breaking up crowds of women. The women were
protesting the death sentence of Kobra Rahmanpour. Rahmanpour has been in
prison for several years accused of murdering her mother-in-law, though she
insists that her actions were in self defense. Iran’s State Supreme Court recently
upheld the verdict for her to be hanged to death.
Reuters News Agency – September 24, 2006
Iran, like many other
countries in the Middle East, has traditionally based nationality on
paternity alone and has been reluctant to grant citizenship to people seen as
outsiders. “The children born in Iran from a foreigner father
and an Iranian mother can apply for citizenship after they reach 18,” the new
law says, according to IRNA. “If the marriage of their parents has
been registered, those people who lack criminal records or a security violation
background can apply for citizenship,” it said. More than an estimated 26,000
Iranian women have married illegal immigrants, mostly Afghans, and are
therefore unable to register their marriages. The new law would not apply to
their children.
WFAFI
News – September 25, 2006
Hojat-el Islam Abbasali
Soleimani, Iran’s Supreme leader
representative in Sistan-Balochestan province declared “one can always trace
women’s footprint as the source to social corruption and crimes”. He added
“even if a man ends up being a criminal, it is the fault of his mother.”
Soleimani further described his view by declaring that “50% success of the
Islamic Revolution is based on the effective role of mothers of the
Revolutionary Guards.”
MEMRI Website – September 29, 2006
In May 2006, Zohreh Tabibzadeh
Nouri, advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was appointed head of
the Iranian Center for Women and Family Affairs. Upon
taking office, she declared her philosophy, saying: "I do not deny that
there are gaps in the [Iranian] law when it comes to protection of women's
rights... [However,] as long as I live and remain in charge of this center, I
will not let anyone sign international charters [or] declarations of
international conferences on women's rights, since we can [fix] the gaps and
existing problems through the Islamic faith. I see no reason to follow the
unsuccessful Western model."
WeNews
- September 29, 2006
Hugo Chavez, one of the key important figures
in the left populist movements spreading throughout Latin America, has publicly
lauded and embraced Iranian president Ahmadinejad. (See “Two anti-US nations
heap praise upon each other,” AP, Sept. 17) It is moments like this, when feminists and any
activists who care about women's liberation, are reminded of just how little
women’s lives matter in the world of patriarchal nationalist politics. Apparently, Chavez,
appears not to have noticed that the Iranian government has created one of the
most brutal and misogynist regimes in modern history—turning Iran into a
country where gender apartheid and sexist hatred of women has been enshrined in
law, where women are still TODAY stoned to death for the “crime” of adultery,
buried up to their necks and pelted in the face and head with stones until they
die, where women have no right to divorce or child custody, are legally forced
to veil under threat of physical beating or imprisonment, can’t travel without
the permission of a husband or father, where their testimony in a court of law
is considered half that of a man, and where political dissent of any kind, for
women and men, is punishable by imprisonment, often torture and death. This is
the government that Chavez compares to his own as a “heroic nation,” one which
he deems, “revolutionary.”
ISNA State News Agency –
October 1, 2006
The World Volleyball
Federation agreed to the Islamic outfit of Iranian Women in international
fields. Deputy of Iran's Women Volleyball Federation, Hajar Nejatizadeh stated
that Iran had got the consent of the World Federation and was trying to present
its designed Islamic outfit for final approval to the FIVB in the upcoming
months. "In a meeting that took place between the chief of our federation
and one of the World Federation representatives, Habib Abdollah, he stated that
there were no obligations for Iranian women to appear in their Islamic
outfit," she added. "He told us that we could appear in our Islamic
outfits just like the Egyptian women because this is not contradictory to any
of the laws of the FIVB," she concluded.
The Guardian – October 4, 2006
She was the speed queen
of the racetrack who became a feminist icon after triumphing over an all-male
field to become Iran's national car rally champion. But now the high-octane
driving career of Laleh Seddigh has juddered to a halt, with a ban from
participating at a race by the country's motor racing authorities. Seddigh, 29,
was walking towards her 1600cc Peugeot 206 at Tehran's Azadi stadium when
stewards blocked her way, citing "security problems". The snub
followed days of wrangling with Iran's racing federation over her right to take
part in an event she won two years ago on her way to becoming national
champion. In the lead-up to the race, she was told her participation was not
guaranteed but was advised to register her name. Her registration was passed
after technicians gave her car the all-clear. "I thought I had been given
the go-ahead," she said. "I was walking towards the grid thinking;
thank God this has been resolved, when they shut the door on me. They said they
didn't know why, but the head of the federation said I wasn't allowed to
participate." It was the first time Seddigh, whose exploits earned her the
soubriquet "the little Schumacher", had been excluded from a contest.
Senior federation officials said they had been unable to obtain permission for
her participation.
AKI Italian News – October 4, 2006
A radio programme on Italian state
broadcaster RAI is organizing a rally Thursday in Rome to save eight Iranian
women sentenced to death by stoning or hanging in the Islamic Republic. Aldo
Forbice, the conductor of Zapping, a programme on the first channel, has
invited his public to participate in a torch-light procession on the women's
behalf. Demonstrators - whom organizers say will include dozens of Italian
mayors, politicians, journalists and intellectuals - will gather in front of
the Iranian embassy in Rome on Thursday night.
Rights group Amnesty International has launched a public awareness
campaign the save the women from imminent execution.
NCR Website – October 4, 2006
According to information received,
on September 26 Mrs. Fereshteh Dibaj, daughter of Rev. Mehdi Dibaj who was
brutally murdered by agents of the regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and
Security (MOIS) in 1994, was arrested in the city of Mashhad. Mrs. Dibaj, 28,
along with her husband Reza Montazami, 35, MOIS agents at 7 am and transferred to an unknown
location. In 1994, Rev. Dibaj, Bishop Haik Hovsepian Mehr and Bishop Tateos
Michaelian were brutally murdered by MOIS agents. Some time before the criminal
murders, the mullahs’ regime was forced under international pressure to release
Rev. Dibaj after he spent nine years in prison. The regime immediately blamed
the killings of the Christian leaders on People’s Mojahedin Organization of
Iran. Four years later, however, in the course of factional feuding in 1998,
the regime’s officials admitted that the priests’ murders were carried out by
the MOIS. The Iranian Resistance calls on all human rights organizations to
condemn the arrest of members of Rev. Dibaj’s family and take urgent action to
secure their freedom.
Spero News – October 5, 2006
Iranian Supreme Leader
Ali Khameini offers advice about observing Ramadan and the practice of
temporary marriage. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Sayyid Ali Khameini, the
successor of the Ayatollah Khomeini, offers advice to mostly Shiite Muslims on
a website offered by the government of Iran. On the website, inquirers can ask
about subjects ranging from the proper observance of the holy month of Ramadan,
to arranging for a “temporary” marriage between a man and a woman.
E-Zan
Featured Reports
Stoning Women to Death
Coming soon to the United Nations:
Iran's chief executioner of women
By Nat
Hentoff
Village Voice
September 17, 2006
On . . . June 29, 2006, a court in the
Islamic Republic of Iran sentenced Malak Ghorbany, a 34-year-old mother of two,
to a brutal death by stoning after finding her guilty of adultery. . . . Two
men who were found guilty of murder in the same court were only given jail
sentences of six years. . . . The size of the stones used during the execution
are required to be . . . not so large that they would kill a woman too quickly,
nor so small that they would fail to cause serious injury or pain. ? A letter,
unanswered, to George W. Bush from John Whitehead, head of the Rutherford
Institute, one of the nation's premier civil liberties organizations. The part
about the stones is from Article 104 of the Iranian penal code.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president
of Iran, has become an international celebrity, brandishing his nuclear
program? and his yearning to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. He is
visited by such personages as U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan and Mike
Wallace of 60 Minutes. In their conversations with him, neither has asked the
swashbuckling leader about "honor killings" by the government of
women charged with having committed "adultery." As human rights
lawyer Lily Mazahery, president of the Legal Rights Institute reports, "in
99 percent of these cases, the accused women have received no legal
representation because, under the Shariah legal system, their testimony is at
best worth only half the value of the testimony of men." And there is no
single executioner. These are mass murders by stone-throwing members of the
community, having the kind of festive time common among American mass lynchers
of blacks, when the murderers brought their children to join in the fun. In
Iran too, kids are present to witness the sinners' redemption. The capital crime of adultery, Mazahery has
explained to World Net Daily, "includes [under Shariah law] any type of
intimate relationship between a girl/woman and a man to whom she is not
permanently or temporarily married. Such a relationship does not necessarily
mean a sexual relationship. "Further, charges of adultery are routinely
issued to women/girls who have been raped? and they are sentenced to
death." (Their unpardonable crime is to have been raped.)
During the continuous coverage in
this country of Iran's nuclear threat and its crucial support of terrorists in
Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, there has been scarcely any mention of
this horrifying dimension of the culture of Iran: sangsar, the stoning to death
of women.
Mazahery, the Persian American
lawyer whose mission has long been to save Iranian women from this and other
brutal treatment, tells me that sangsar, "dating back to the dark
ages," was, for a time, suspended by the pre-revolutionary regime due to
pressure from international human rights organizations, combined with protests
from civilized persons around the world. But when the mullahs took over in the
1979 revolution, they brought back Shariah law, and when this president came to
power, he reinstituted public stonings, as a "religious principle,"
against women.
As of this writing, President
Ahmadinejad is on his way to address the United Nations in New York. There will
be heavy press coverage. Will any reporter ask him about the stoning of women
in his country? and the particular case of Malak Ghorbany? And while former
"moderate" Iranian president Mohammad Khatami has been in the United
States? lecturing at Harvard, among other prestigious venues? I know of no
reporter who has asked him to discourse on the stoning of women under his
successor.
Mazahery, who was recently invited
by students and faculty to respond to Khatami at Harvard, has written and
circulated an online petition, "Save Malak Ghorbany From Death by Public
Stoning," addressed to Kofi Annan; the U.N.'s commissioner of human
rights; and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran; as
well as to the head of its judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi...Wall Street
Journal: "Satellite dishes are being collected to cut off public access to
the . . . news of the global community. Women's groups, labor organizations,
and student groups are not permitted even the more peaceful acts of
protest."
As a result, however, of growing
international concern about Malak Ghorbany, partly from Mazahery's petition,
the Islamic regime has stayed her execution until she gets a new trial. But as
Mazahery points out, Iran has used this three-card-monte trick before. As she
told World Net Daily: "It is quite possible the Islamic regime will
schedule a rush sham trial and reissue the same sentence [and] even with a new
trial, Ghorbany would still receive the same sentence or be sentenced to death
by public hanging instead." The pressure to save Malak Ghorbany must
continue. The direct link to Malak's petition, where you can sign on, is petitiononline.com/Malak/petition.html.
For related topics, and to link to videos of actual public stonings, click on savemalak.googlepages.com/home
. Keep in mind, Mazahery warns, “There are no scheduled dates for such killings
in Iran. A prisoner can be executed at any time with little or no notice at
all. Needless to say, that makes matters that much more complicated and urgent
in these types of cases." I shall return to this ongoing story and to
Mazahery, whose own personal story illuminates the barbarism of the rulers of
Iran? where scores of student dissenters are in prison and, as Ali Afshari and
Akbar Atri report, "the noose has been tightened around the neck of
writers, journalists, and bloggers in the past few months."
Women graduates challenge Iran
By Frances Harrison
BBC News, Tehran
September 19, 2006
The number of women graduating from
Iran's universities is overtaking the number of men, promising a change in the
job market and, with it, profound social change. In some subjects 70% of Iran's
graduates are women Twenty postgraduate students are sitting in a plush modern
classroom listening to a lecture on environmental management at the Islamic
Azad University - a private institution with 1.6 million students across Iran.
The room is darkened so the students can watch the lecturer's slide show
comparing energy consumption around the world. Three quarters of the students
in this class are women - the five men in the class are huddled together in a corner.
As Professor Majid Abbaspour explains, this is a far cry from the past:
"When I was doing my bachelor's degree in Iran we had a class of 60 in
mechanical engineering with only four women.” Now the number has changed a lot
- I think this may be because the attitudes of families have changed."
Well over half of university students in Iran are now women. In the applied
physics department of Azad University 70% of the graduates are women - a
statistic which would make many universities in the West proud. It is a huge
social shift since the 1979 Revolution: Iran's Islamic government has managed
to convince even traditional rural families that it is safe to send their
daughters away from home to study.
Alarm
But in some areas the larger number
of women than men is beginning to alarm the authorities. "As a matter of
fact it's starting to get worrying - in some fields maybe they will put some
limitations?" says Professor Abbaspour, referring to suggestions that
there should be positive discrimination for men in certain key subjects. We women want to show we are here and we
have a lot to say - for years we have lived under the heavy shadow of men - our
fathers and brothers and now we want to come out of that Massoumeh UmidvarStudent
and working mother
He explains: "In the oil and
gas industries at the present time there is no discrimination but... for
example when they want to work on the oil and gas platforms in the Persian Gulf
area it might be very hard for women to do so." Part of the reason for
more women in university education seems to be that many young men are more
interested in making money. "We women want to show we are here and we have
a lot to say," says Massoumeh Pahshahie Umidvar. "For years we have
lived under the heavy shadow of men, our fathers and brothers, and now we want
to come out of that." Massoumeh holds down a job in a factory, has a child
and is doing a postgraduate degree. Her life is completely different from that
of her mother who stayed at home, cooking and looking after children.
'Historic opportunity'
"Before the revolution
everybody supposed that if you wanted to be a rich person with a good standard
of living you needed to be educated," explains journalist and social
commentator Sayed Laylaz. I will choose a person as a husband who lets me work
because I love my job...”
"But after the revolution
because of a lot of changes - especially because of the Iran-Iraq war - this
mentality changed. “At the moment boys don't think that if they want to be a
successful person they should be educated and because of this they leave free
more places for girls to go to university." Mr Laylaz calls it a historic
opportunity for women that they have eagerly seized. He hopes this new
generation of educated Iranian women will force social change in the decades
ahead. It will not be long, he argues, before women are in charge of
recruitment in offices. Already he sees signs that Iran's politicians recognize
the importance of women's votes in elections. Massoumeh tells her husband that
it will not be long before Iranian men will be forced to sit at home while
their wives run the country. Already it has become a problem for women with
degrees to find husbands with the same level of education.
Marriage or a career
Another social change is that young
women who do have careers are now beginning to think twice about getting
married. Especially as under Iranian law a woman needs her husband's permission
to go to work. Graduating women are not accepting traditional social roles
Sudabeh Shahkhudahee has just finished a night shift as a nurse and is relaxing
in front of her cousin's satellite TV and reading her horoscope. After studying
at university and finding the right job Sudabeh is nervous about her future -
she could lose it all if she marries the wrong man. "I will choose a
person as a husband who lets me work because I love my job," she says.
"I will not give up my job after I get married." This is a sentiment
that is increasingly being heard in a society where a single woman even has
trouble hiring an apartment to live alone. Sudabeh knows it is going to be hard
to find a man who will not have a problem with her doing night shifts and being
away from home for long periods, especially when she has children. Working
mothers are a relatively new phenomenon in Iran but attitudes are changing
among the younger generation of working women, many of whom will no longer
accept a husband who does not share the workload at home. "Our men are
coming out of this macho shell and becoming more co-operative," says a
young married student. Many believe Iranian women who have worked hard to
overtake Iranian men will be the ones to bring about social and political
change. "Maybe in the near future we can get our rights - at least I
hope," says another student.
Iran: Kobra "I want to
live!"
28 September 2006
Scoop Independent News
Press Release: Organization for
Women's Liberation
"I want
to live!"
This is what
Kobra wants the world to know. She has written a letter from prison. Kobra
Rahmanpour is a 22 year old woman who has been sentenced to death by the
Islamic regime of Iran. She had spent the past three years in prison and been
convicted of murdering her mother in law by a kitchen knife. On the first of
January 2005 she was woken up early in the morning to be told that she was
going to be hanged that day. Kobra was to be hanged on April 15, 2005 but the international pressure delayed her
execution.
In July 2005
following the refusal of 4 of the relatives of the mother in law to pardon her,
the court issued her death sentence by hanging. According to Islamic law of
"an eye for an eye" if the relatives of the deceased pardon the
accused, then he/she could be freed. Kobra now faces death by hanging. Her
execution must be stopped.
Kobra herself
is a victim of poverty and injustice. She was born and raised in a family that
could not even provide the mere necessities of life for its members. Her father
is elderly and one of her brothers is disabled and there is no welfare system
to look after such people who are in need. Kobra had to give up her ambitions
of going to university, and in order to help her family survive, married a man
40 years her senior. But her life did not get better; in fact it was made hell
by repeated maltreatment and abuse se received from her husband and his family.
On one
occasion he was even arrested and imprisoned for physically and sexually
abusing her. In the last incident according to Kobra, she was attacked by her
mother in law with a kitchen knife in her hand. Kobra claims that she killed
her mother in law in a self defense act.
We urge all
to support our campaign to save Kobra. Please sign our online petition:
www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?kobra
Kobra
Rahmanpoor's open letter
"I
want to live!
I am a human being
just like you. I do not want to die. However I am now a sol less body who in
fear of the execution rope has forgotten how to laugh and be happy. A lot of
people say to me how come your case has been so much publicized but you are
still in prison? I have to tell them that I am only steps away from execution.
I too like all of you am afraid of dying. Please help me so that this would not
be my last letter.
People,
friends!
My mother,
father and handicapped brother are very worried about me. Your supports so far
have been such a comfort to them. I wish my life was different. I wish I had
finished my pre-university education. I wish I did not have to be a servant for
my husband. I wish I had not reached insanity. I suffered a lot and was
intimidated. I am a true victim. Now they are about to hang the victim. This
was not and is not my destiny.
In these dark
days of fear, I urge you once again to help me. I thank all mass media and all
people who supported me before. Now, may be for the last time, I urge you to do
everything you can to free me from execution. I like freedom. I dream about my
freedom and a good life.
I have
suffered enough. Help me to get rid of the nightmare of execution which wakes
me up all the time. Do what you can. There is not much time left. Every minute
takes me nearer to the rope. Please help me! I am afraid of the rope and death.
I hate the rope that is waiting for me on the crane. I want to live. All other
doors are closed to me. Nobody helps me. My only hope is the people. I want to
hold my mother and father in my arms.
I want to
thank my mother, father and all who have supported me. Kobra Rahmanpoor
From Evin
prison, Tehran/Iran
Shahrivar
1385 (September 2006)"
Kobra's
father talks to the world!
"She is
scared from the execution, the rope and the crane. She wants to go to
university and study. Kobra is a very kind girl, her inmates can testify that.
She should be free as soon as possible to go back to her normal life."
To all noble
humans, and all human right defender bodies
I, Abolfazl
Rahmanpour, the father of Kobra Rahmanpour pledge you to protest to the unfair
sentence of my young daughter.
Kobra, my
young daughter, was forced to marry a man, 43 years older than herself. Kobra
was a good student in her school and her wish was to study in the university
but she was forced to forget all of her wishes because of the extreme poverty
of the family.
Kobra had a
hard life before marriage and after marriage her life became even worse. the
extremeness of problems and sufferings that she had to take in a family that
looked at her first a servant and then a daughter-in-law, was so much that made
a kind girl like her to commit a murder in an accident and while defending
herself.
Kobra spent
the best years of her youth in the prison and with the threat of death. She has
suffered so much and has completely fall. It is so many years that she can feel
the execution rope on her neck and her life goes on with sensing death, she
shouldn't suffer more tortures. When I look at her colorless eyes, fallen
teeth, and senseless body I always ask myself what did I do wrong? What
shouldn't I have done? Whose fault is this?
As she has
said herself she wants to live and she is scared from the execution, the rope
and the crane. She wants to go to university and study. Kobra is a very kind
girl, her inmates can testify that. She should be free as soon as possible to
go back to her normal life.
Our only hope
is the protest of you noble people to this unjust sentence. The only way of
preventing this sentence is the protest of all of the people, human rights
defending bodies, committees against the executions and international bodies.
Just for a second thought what me and Kobra's mother are going true to realize
how horrible are this days. I wouldn't mind to be executed instead of Kobra, is
that possible? I have always worked from day to night, but I don't know why our
destiny went this way? I and Kobra's mother have no hope to life or another
thing beside Kobra. Help us. Save my Family, my disabled son who always asks
about her sister, Kobra, from this horror of execution of our dear Kobra. We
are waiting for your definite actions. We all ask you to sign this letter. I
know that there is no time and we are in last seconds. I ask for your help once
more, in these last seconds. Sign this letter to show that you also demand
Kobra's Freedom.
Please send
your supports to this Email: campagne.kobra@gmail.com
We will
declare the names of those who sign in this blog: www.save-kobra.blogfa.com
AbolFazl
Rahmanpour, September 2006
Seven Women Face Stoning in Iran
By Alison
Langley
Inter
Press News Agency
September 29, 2006
Amnesty
International has issued an urgent appeal calling on its members to write
letters to the Republic of Iran asking them not to stone seven women.
Nearly all
of the women have been sentenced to die by stoning for adultery. Officially
Iran had placed a moratorium on the cruel and painful practice in 2002, but
Amnesty claims sentencing continues. The group has received credible reports
that two people were stoned to death in May.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee has ruled that
treating adultery and fornication as criminal offences does not comply with
international human rights standards.
"The
sentence of execution by stoning for adultery breaches Iran's commitment under
article 6(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that
death sentences will be imposed ‘only for the most serious crimes',"
Amnesty wrote in its appeal. Under Shari'a law, a prisoner is buried up to her breast, her
hands restrained. Rules also specify the size of the stones which can be thrown
so that death is painful and not imminent. Both men and women can be sentenced
to die by stoning. In practice, however, an overwhelming number of women receive
that penalty. "It's high time this
brutal practice ends.
Not only
are people deprived of their right to life by the state but they are tortured
in the process," Nicole Choueiry, Amnesty's Middle East press officer,
told IPS. "Iran should review its legislation as a matter
of urgency to bring it into line with international human rights
standards," she added. According to an independent legal analysis of the
country's penal code, Iranian judges are required to issue these mandatory
sentences. Rarely, IPS sources inside Iran said are
these sentences carried out.
One lawyer,
who asked not to be named, told IPS that the head of the judiciary,
Ayatollah Shahroudi, frequently has been able to postpone executions. He does
not, however, have the authority to commute death sentences to life
imprisonment. In addition to the seven women mentioned in the latest report,
Amnesty earlier issued reports of two other Iranians also allegedly at risk of
being stoned.
According to Amnesty, Parisa A. received her execution
sentence while working as a prostitute in the city of Shiraz. She claims she
had been forced into prostitution by her husband due to her family's poverty.
Her sentence was upheld by a branch of the Supreme Court in November 2005. Her
case is under review by the high court.
Iran E., an
Ahwazi Arab from the Bakhtiari clan, was sentenced to be stoned for adultery.
Her verdict was upheld by the Supreme Court in April. Khayrieh V., another
Ahwazi Arab, was reportedly subjected to domestic violence by her husband when
she allegedly began an affair with one of his relatives, who then murdered her
husband, the Amnesty report said.
She has
denied any involvement in the murder but has admitted to adultery. The Supreme
Court has upheld her sentence and the case now apparently has been sent to the
Head of the Judiciary for permission to be implemented. Amnesty quoted her as
saying, "I am ready to be hanged, but they should not stone me. They could
strangle you and you would die, but it is very difficult to have stones hitting
you in the head."
Shamameh
Ghorbani (also known as Malek), was sentenced to die by stoning for adultery in
June after relatives killed a man they found in her home. Her case is being
re-examined.
Kobra
Najjar, 44, is at imminent risk of execution, Amnesty said. She claims to have
been forced into prostitution by her husband, a heroin addict who was violent
towards her. "In 1995, after a severe beating by her husband, she told one
of her regular customers that she wanted to kill her husband. The customer
allegedly murdered her husband after Kobra Najjar took him to an arranged
meeting place. The customer was sentenced to death, but he was pardoned by the
victim's family, to whom he paid blood money," Amnesty added. Soghra
Mola'i was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment for being an accomplice to the
January 2004 murder of her husband Abdollah and to execution by stoning for
adultery. She claims her lover killed her husband. Her boyfriend has been
sentenced to hang for the homicide, after receiving 100 lashes for
"illicit relations." In May 2005, a Tehran court sentenced Fatemeh,
whose surname is unknown, to pay retribution for being an accomplice to murder,
and to be stoned for having an "illicit relationship" with a man
named Mahmoud.
Her husband
has been sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment as an accomplice to the murder.
Her case is under review with the Supreme Court. In addition to these women,
Amnesty officials said the human rights group was concerned about the fates of
Ashraf Kalhori and Hajieh Esmailvand, also convicted of adultery and sentenced
to be stoned.
To send
us your comments or op-ed on relevant topics for future issues, email editor@wfafi.org
To
unsubscribe or subscribe others to our newsletter, email newsletter@wfafi.org
For past
volumes of E-Zan visit www.wfafi.org
Volume
29, October 15, 2006
The
E-Zan © 2006
<<Back