Will Vatican help Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani?
p2pnet view Freedom | P2P:- The Vatican may use its “moral authority” to try to “persuade Iran” to spare the life of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani (right), the Iranian mother sentenced to death by stoning for alleged adultery.
In the church’s first public comments on the case, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi yesterday “denounced stoning as a ‘particularly brutal form’ of capital punishment and strongly hinted that the Holy See would use quiet diplomacy in an effort to influence the Iranian authorities”, says Radio Free Europe.
It has him stating the Vatican is “following the case with attention and interest” and “When the Holy See is asked, in an appropriate way, to intervene in humanitarian issues with the authorities of other countries, as it has happened many times in the past, it does so not in a public way, but through its own diplomatic channels.”
His comments came after Ashtiani’s son Sajad Ghaderzadeh told Italian news agency Adnkronos he’d “appealed to Pope Benedict XVI and to the government of Italy to help save his mother’s life”, says the post, going on:
“The prospect of papal intervention is the latest twist in a case that has caused an international outcry. The Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has already offered asylum to Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two who was originally sentenced to 99 lashes after being convicted in May 2006 of an “illicit relationship” with two men following the death of her husband.
“But after the case was reopened by another court, she was later convicted of ‘adultery while being married’ and sentenced to death by stoning.”
The case also “triggered a diplomatic row between Iran and France after Iran’s hard-line ‘Keyhan’ newspaper described Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, wife of the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, as a ‘prostitute’ after she signed a petition on behalf of Ashtiani”, adds Radio Free Europe.
Radio Free Europe – Vatican May Intervene To Save Iranian Woman In Stoning Case, September 6, 2010
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It`s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
September 6th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
“The Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has already offered asylum to Ashtiani”
I hope that he will offer asylum to her family too because these Iranians governmental criminals are going after families too.
Do you remember Neda?
September 6th, 2010 at 5:57 pm
The lawyer for an Iranian woman sentenced to be stoned on an adultery conviction said Monday that he and her children are worried the delayed execution could be carried out soon with the end of a moratorium on death sentences for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
In an unusual turn in the case, the lawyer also confirmed that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was lashed 99 times last week in a separate punishment meted out because a British newspaper ran a picture of an unveiled woman mistakenly identified as her. Under Iran’s clerical rule, women must cover their hair in public.
With the end of Ramadan this week, the mother of two could be executed “any moment,” said her lawyer, Javid Houtan Kian.
The sentence was put on hold in July after an international outcry over the brutality of the punishment, and it is now being reviewed by Iran’s supreme court.
Ms. Ashtiani was convicted in 2006 of having an “illicit relationship” with two men after the murder of her husband the year before and was sentenced at that time to 99 lashes. Later that year, she was also convicted of adultery and sentenced to be stoned, even though she retracted a confession that she says was made under duress.
“The possibility of stoning still exists, any moment,” Mr. Kian told The Associated Press. “Her stoning sentence was only delayed; it has not been lifted yet.”
After putting the stoning sentence on hold, Iran suddenly announced that the woman had also been brought to trial and convicted of playing a role in her husband’s 2005 murder. Her lawyer disputes that, saying no charges against her in the killing have ever been part of her case file.
In early August, Iranian authorities broadcast a purported confession from Ms. Ashtiani on state-run television. In it, a woman identified as Ms. Ashtiani admits to being an unwitting accomplice in her husband’s killing.
Mr. Kian says he believes she was tortured into confessing.
In the latest twist, authorities are said to have flogged her for the publication of a photo of a woman without her hair covered in the Times of London newspaper. The woman in the photo was misidentified as Ms. Ashtiani.
She was lashed on Thursday, Mr. Kian said, citing information from a fellow prisoner who was released last week. Mr. Kian has been allowed no direct contact with his client since last month.
“We have no access to Ms. Ashtiani, but there is no reason for the released prisoner to lie” about the flogging, he said.
There was no official Iranian confirmation of the new punishment.
The woman’s son, 22-year-old Sajjad Qaderzadeh, said he did not know whether the new lashing sentence had been carried out yet, but that he also heard about the sentence from a prisoner who recently left the Tabriz prison where his mother is being held.
“Publishing the photo provided a judge an excuse to sentence my poor mother to 99 lashes on the charge of taking a picture unveiled,” Mr. Qaderzadeh told the AP.
The Times apologized in its Monday edition but added that the lashing “is simply a pretext.”
“The regime’s purpose is to make Ms. Ashtiani suffer for an international campaign to save her that has exposed so much iniquity,” the newspaper said.
Another lawyer who once represented Ms. Ashtiani, Mohammad Mostafaei, said in a news conference in Paris that it was not certain if there really had been a new conviction and sentence over the photograph.
“I have contacted my former colleagues at the court who told me nothing was clear on this situation,” he said at the news conference with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. “There isn’t any punishment for this act in our law.”
Mr. Kouchner called the stoning sentence “the height of barbarism” and said her case has become a “personal cause” and he was “ready to do anything to save her. If I must go to Tehran to save her, I’ll go to Tehran.”
Ms. Ashtiani’s two children remain in Iran and her son is a ticket seller for a bus company in the northern Iranian city of Tabriz. He said he and his younger sister, Farideh, 18, have not seen their mother since early August.
“We have really missed her,” he said. “We expect all influential bodies to help to save her.”
Among other countries calling for Iran to show flexibility in the case are Italy and Brazil.
The Vatican on Sunday raised the possibility of using behind-the-scenes diplomacy to try to save her life as well.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/africa-mideast/iranian-woman-could-be-executed-after-ramadan-lawyer-says/article1697435/
September 6th, 2010 at 8:25 pm
For the Catholic Church to claim moral authority on any subject is a joke. After 2000 years of torture and murder and the collecting of untold wealth it rings hollow. Read a good novel about the RCC called On This Rock by Dave Leonard, yes it’s fiction but its based on historical facts and it draws a very interesting theory about the Church’s origins.
September 7th, 2010 at 11:03 am
The “law” in Iran and most of the middle east is a joke.
September 7th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
So, Mr. Write, you would rather just have the Catholic Church (and no, I’m not a Catholic) merely sit and be quiet in the face of this event? Perhaps we should just all sit and be silent, never daring to offer the slightest criticism as the proponents of Sharia systematically murder, mutilate and annihilate their own citizens under a code of justice that is barbaric and medieval at best.
This is America, so I guess that seems reasonable. Muslims, including the radical Salafists, have officially entered the P.C. du jour Club. And if ANY group or person works up the temerity to utter one protest, let’s find a hundred reasons why their past disqualifies them from criticizing institutional murder and the enslavement of women.
In the meantime, we can respectfully applaud them as they execute another 7-year-old boy for “spying.” Defending this “religion” is about as logical as saying, “Charlie Manson really had a good heart – regardless of that nasty thing he did.”
September 9th, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Barbarism, torture, and imprisonment are the tools of a failed governmental regime, however change must come from within and from those directly affected, this has been seen as the most effective method of regime change in the long term, that does not of course aid this poor woman in her hour of need but it will stir many to action and thus some good will come of this corrupt and cowardly abuse of a weak and defenceless human being.