The Qur’an on lashes: “Let no compassion move you” (24:2). No worries there in Iran. After all, Ashtiani has already received 99 lashes once before. “Iran stoning woman ‘to be lashed over photograph’,” from BBC News, September 5:
An Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery now faces being whipped for indecency, her son says.
Iranian authorities sentenced Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani to 99 lashes after the Times newspaper published a picture purportedly of her without a headscarf.
The Times later published a correction, saying the photograph was of a different Iranian woman.
After an international outcry, Iranian officials temporarily halted Ms Ashtiani’s stoning sentence in July.
There are fears the death sentence could still be carried out by hanging.
Stoning isn’t off the table. Anything is possible at any time after Ramadan.
Contested confessions
Ms Ashtiani’s son has given several interviews saying he was told of the new sentence of 99 lashes by people who have recently been released from the prison in Tabriz where his mother is being held.
On 28 August, the Times published a picture it said was of Ms Ashtiani that it had obtained from one of her lawyers.
The lawyer, Mohammad Mostafei, who has fled Iran, said he received the picture from her son, Sajad Ghaderzadeh – a claim Mr Ghaderzadeh denies.
Mr Ghaderzadeh said the new sentence was “an excuse to increase [the authorities’] harassment of our mother”.
In an open letter, he said his mother had been sentenced to receive 99 lashes “on false charges of spreading corruption and indecency by disseminating this picture of a woman presumed to be her without hijab”.
You do not have the right to a phone call:
He said he did not believe the sentence had been carried out but that her family and lawyer had not been allowed to visit her for two weeks and she had not been allowed to use a telephone.
Mr Ghaderzadeh said the family was appealing against the sentence.
In May 2006, a criminal court in East Azerbaijan province found Ms Ashtiani guilty of having had an “illicit relationship” with two men following the death of her husband. She was given 99 lashes.
Per the instructions of the aforementioned Qur’an 24:2: “The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication,- flog each of them with a hundred stripes: Let not compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by Allah, if ye believe in Allah and the Last Day: and let a party of the Believers witness their punishment.”
But that September, during the trial of a man accused of murdering her husband, another court reopened an adultery case based on events that allegedly took place before her husband died.
You do not have the right to remain silent, and anything you are forced to say will undoubtedly be used against you:
Despite retracting a confession she said she had been forced to make under duress, Ms Ashtiani was convicted of “adultery while being married” and sentenced to death by stoning….
More on stoning in Islam can be found here.