By IANS/AKI,
Tehran : The Iranian mother of two whose death-by-stoning sentence was suspended earlier last year does not risk being hanged, according to the justice chief of a southern Iranian province where she is imprisoned.
“Over the past few days some of my erroneously-interpreted comments have me saying how capital punishment should be applied to Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani,” the Fars news agency Wednesday quoted East Azerbaijan head magistrate Malek Ajdar Sharifi as saying.
On Sunday, the Iranian media cited Sharifi as saying that Islamic experts were re-examining the sentence to see if it is possible to hang a woman who was sentenced to die by stoning.
According to the reports he said the sentence would be carried out “as soon as the results were made public”.
Those comments prompted outcries by groups that had spoken out against the sentence for the woman who was found guilty not only of adultery, but of taking part in her husband’s murder.
Two courts in the northwestern city of Tabriz, capital of East Azarbaijan province, in 2006 sentenced Ashtiani to death by stoning. But in 2010 the sentence was suspended pending a new examination of her case.
Ashtiani is currently serving a 10-year sentence for helping her lover kill her husband.