The delayed execution will likely be taken as a gesture of compassion in some circles, but the Iranian authorities are still toying with the defendant, who doesn’t know if her end will come the day after Ramadan ends, or at any arbitrary point after that, and at this point, whether she will be shot, stoned to death, or hung. And they are are playing a waiting game with the international community as well, biding their time to see the collective attention span wanes long enough to carry out the sentence.
Ultimately, they are attempting a balancing act between the imperative to carry out Sharia for the sake of the regime’s credibility as an Islamic government, and managing the global public relations quandary that cruel and unusual punishment necessarily entails.
More on this story. “Final verdict postponed for Iranian woman facing stoning,” from CNN, August 16:
Tehran, Iran (CNN) — An Iranian court has delayed the final verdict of a 43-year-old woman sentenced to death by stoning, a human rights group said Sunday, two days after the country announced she will not be executed during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan,
The International Committee Against Stoning did not say how it got its information on the postponement of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani’s final verdict, which had previously been scheduled to come down last Thursday.
The group said in a statement that the final verdict in Ashtiani’s case is now expected on August 21, the date of her lawyer’s next court appearance.
Iranian state TV broadcast a program about Ashtiani on Friday in which it said that she will not be executed during Ramadan, which began last week, the International Committee Against Stoning said Sunday….