SAKINEH Mohammadi Ashtiani — the Iranian woman whose sentence of death by stoning has caused international outrage — left prison yesterday to dine with her children and speak to the media.
Her son Sajjad Ghaderzadeh was freed on bail of $US40,000 ($39,112) from Tabriz prison just hours after he pleaded with the judiciary to spare his mother’s life.
He is accused of illegally meeting two German journalists, who have been detained for working on visitor’s visas.
Ms Ashtiani appeared before international media alongside her son where she said she planned to sue two German journalists jailed in Iran for interviewing him.
“I have told Sajjad to sue the ones who have disgraced me and the country,” Ms Ashtiani told reporters, who were not allowed to ask questions, at a house outside the jail in the northwestern city of Tabriz where she was tried.
She named those she wants to sue as “the two Germans”, her former lawyer Mohammad Mostafaie, Germany-based anti-stoning campaigner Mina Ahadi and her husband’s convicted murderer, Issa Taheri. Ms Ashtiani said the Germans had “embarrassed” her, but failed to say why. “I have a complaint against them,” she said at the media conference.
The two German journalists from Bild am Sonntag were arrested on October 10 in Tabriz for interviewing Mr Ghaderzadeh and the family lawyer, who were also taken into custody.
Iran claims the two entered the country on tourist visas and failed to obtain the necessary accreditation for journalists from the authorities before “posing as reporters” when they contacted her family.
“I have come in front of the cameras at my own will to talk to the world,” Ms Ashtiani, who has been jailed since 2006, said yesterday. “I am willing to talk because many people exploited (the case) and said I have been tortured, which is a lie,” she said, speaking in Persian with a thick accent of the Azeri tongue of the northwestern region from which she hails.
“Leave my case alone. Why do you disgrace me?”
Ms Ashtiani was convicted of adultery in 2006 after the murder of her husband. In the face of international outrage the death sentence has been suspended and is under review. Mr Ghaderzadeh, 22, faces his own court case after talking to the German reporters about his mother’s sentence and has been released on bail while a court considers his case.
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