to save their mother.
Sajjad Ghaderzadeh told the Italian news agency ANSA that he and his sister, Sahideh, have formally written the Pontiff.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi last month said Benedict was monitoring the stoning issue.
However, the case seems to be fading as a public issue in the West, at least based on the number of signatures to an online petition seeking freedom for Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani.
As of Tuesday afternoon, 346,590 signatures were reported on the petition posted at www.freesakineh.org. That was an increase of only 1,938 signatures over the previous week or an average of just 275 signatures a day, way down from previous weeks. Here are the weekly averages over the last nine weeks starting with this past week’s average:
275
365
1,000
3,800
11,400
3,700
2,200
3,600
2,000
The large spike was the week that news sources reported Ashtiani had been sentenced to an additional 99 lashes for allowing her photo without a head covering to be published in The Times of London.
