The BBC brings the welcome news:
The authorities in Iran have announced that a woman convicted of adultery will not be stoned to death.
But it is not clear whether they have lifted the death sentence against Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who has been in prison in Tabriz since 2006.
The 43-year-old had already been punished with flogging for an “illicit relationship” outside marriage when another court tried her for adultery.
There has been an international campaign to prevent her being stoned.
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said stoning was a “medieval punishment” and that its continued use showed Iran’s disregard for human rights.
“If the punishment is carried out, it will disgust and appal the watching world,” he told a news conference in London on Thursday.
Under Iran’s strict interpretation of Islamic law, sex before marriage is punishable by 100 lashes, but married offenders are sentenced to death by stoning. The stones used must be large enough to cause the condemned pain, but not sufficient to kill immediately.
The Islamic Human Rights Commission must be congratulated for its vocal and ultimately effective campaign to prevent the judicial murder of this woman by stoning. Even now, they are pulling out all the stops to ensure that she does not suffer the death penalty in any form.
What’s that you say?
The IHRC has said and done nothing at all about Ashtiani?
Good heavens, you could have knocked me down with a feather.
Who would have thought that a Khomeinist organisation which supports a concept of “Islamic human rights” which is in conflict with “universal human rights” would be so busy campaigning for a convicted jihadi, that it has no time to stand up for women who have supposedly been ‘taken in adultery’.
