TEHRAN — A lawyer for an Iranian woman who had faced death by stoning on an adultery conviction said Thursday that he suspects she was tortured into confessing that she was an unwitting accomplice to her husband’s murder.
Iranian state television broadcast the purported confession of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, 43, on Wednesday night in an apparent attempt to deflect criticism of her case by the U.S., other countries and rights groups. Instead of the adultery charge, it focused on allegations she was involved in murder — something the U.S. and others punish by death.
Human Rights Watch has said Ashtiani, a mother of two, was first convicted in May 2006 of having an “illicit relationship” with two men after the death of her husband and was sentenced by a court to 99 lashes. Later that year, she was also convicted of adultery and sentenced to be stoned to death, even though she retracted a confession that she claims was made under duress.
Iran last month lifted the stoning sentence for the time being following international outrage.
Iran says Ashtiani has been convicted of involvement in the murder of her husband. She could still be executed by hanging.
In the broadcast, the woman identified as Ashtiani — her image was blurred — said she unwittingly played a role in her husband’s murder.
“I established telephone contacts with a man in 2005,” she said. “He deceived me by his language. . . . He told me, ‘Let’s kill your husband.’ I could not believe at all that my husband would be killed. I thought he was joking. . . . Later I learned that killing was his profession.”
She said the man electrocuted her husband while she watched.
Ashtiani’s lawyer, Javid Houtan Kian, denied she has ever been charged with murder or brought to trial over her husband’s killing in 2005. The lawyer said the man’s killer spent three years in prison and is now free after a pardon from Ashtiani’s children.
Stoning was widely imposed after the 1979 Islamic revolution, and though Iran’s judiciary still hands down such sentences, they are often converted to other punishments.
Under Islamic rulings, a man is usually buried up to his waist, while a woman is buried up to her chest with her hands also buried. Those carrying out the verdict then throw stones until the condemned dies.
