Iran TV denies stoning sentence woman freed

Iranian television yesterday denied reports that the woman at the centre of an outcry over her sentence to death by stoning for adultery has been freed, ­saying that footage of her at her home was for a televised re-enactment to be aired later.

A German-based campaign group said late on Thursday that Mohammadi Ashtiani had been released along with her son and lawyer after the photographs of her at her home appeared in the media.

“Contrary to a vast publicity campaign by Western media that confessed murderer Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani has been released, a broadcast production team with the Iran-based Press TV has arranged with Iran’s judicial authorities to follow Ms Ashtiani to her house to produce a visual recount of the crime at the murder scene,” Press TV said on its website.

The channel said yesterday it would air the programme, which includes interviews with people involved in the case including her son and her lawyer.

Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two, was sentenced to death by two different courts in the northwestern city of Tabriz in separate trials in 2006.

A sentence to hang for her involvement in the murder of her husband was commuted to a 10-year jail term by an appeals court in 2007.

But a second sentence to death by stoning on charges of adultery levelled over several relationships, notably with the man convicted of her husband’s murder, was upheld by another appeals court the same year.

Ms Sakineh’s current lawyer, Javid Houtan Kian, was arrested in the northwestern city of Tabriz in September along with two Germans who were conducting an interview with her son.

The Germans entered Iran on tourist visas and worked for the Bild am Sonntag Sunday newspaper.

Her first lawyer Mohammad Mostafaie fled Iran for Norway last July, when Teheran issued a warrant for his arrest.

Iran has already paraded Mohammadi Ashtiani on ­television twice this year.