hanged for murder on Wednesday, after the Iran Times went to press, a human rights group reported Tuesday.
“The authorities in Tehran have given the go-ahead to Tabriz prison for the execution of Iran stoning case Sakineh Moham-madi Ashtiani,” the International Committee against Stoning, a German-based campaign group, said on its website. “It has been reported that she is to be executed this Wednesday, 3 November.”
It said she would be hanged for murdering her husband, thereby sidestepping her sentence of death by stoning for adultery, the charge that brought her case international attention.
Her lawyers and family say she was exonerated on the murder charge years ago. The assumption of critics is that the state has been determined not to bend to international pressure and free her, instead insisting on executing her, though it shifted away from stoning on the belief that the negative reaction abroad would not be as great for a hanging and that it could defend itself more easily on an execution for homicide than an execution for adultery.
British Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt spoke to Iran’s charge d’affaires in London, Safar Ali Eslamian Koupaei, by phone on Tuesday to press for an update on Ashtiani’s case. But the Iranian diplomat was unable to confirm whether reports about her imminent execution were accurate, the Foreign Office said.
“I … took the opportunity to remind him that the UK government would regard the execution of Ms. Ashtiani as utterly unacceptable,” Burt said in a statement.