Iran’s ’stoning to death’ woman brought out for dinner with children following son’s appeal

TEHRAN - Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery charges, was taken out on prison leave to have dinner with her daughter and son, hours after he had appealed to the judiciary to spare her life.

Her sentence to be stoned to death was suspended after an international outcry, but she still faces possible execution by hanging.

After having dinner with her children on Saturday at the same place where her son Sajjad Ghaderzadeh, Ashtiani said that she was not tortured while in prison, adding that: “these are all rumors”.

“Whatever interview I have given so far, I have given voluntarily. No one has forced me. I have spoken on my own accord,” The China Daily quoted her, as saying.

Ghaderzadeh, who faces his own court case after talking to two German reporters about his mother’s sentence, said that his mother had violated Islamic law but called for compassion and forgiveness.

“In my opinion my mother is also guilty but since we have lost our father we do not want to lose our mother too. Consequently, we ask for a commutation of the penalty,” he added.

Ashtiani, a mother of two, was originally convicted in May 2006 after being found guilty of having had an “illicit relationship” with two men following the death of her husband and reportedly received 99 lashes in front of her son.

Later that year, as a result of information that surfaced during the trial of a man accused of murdering her husband, her adultery case was re-opened.

Despite retracting a confession she said she had made under duress in August, Ashtiani was convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning.

The Iranian government also claims that she had a hand in the murder of her husband. (ANI)