TEHRAN: Iran has demanded that Western nations stop interfering in the case of the woman sentenced to death by stoning for her alleged adultery.
Iran has accused them of manufacturing the outcry over her fate to damage the Islamic Republic.
Separately yesterday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejected Brazil’s recent offer of asylum for Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, telling the former British Labour MP George Galloway in an interview on state-run Press TV: “We are keen to export our technology to Brazil rather than such an issue.”
On Monday, a group of public figures, including the Nobel laureates Wole Soyinka and Jody Williams and the actresses Juliette Binoche and Mia Farrow, added to weeks of mounting pressure from Western governments and human rights organisations with a letter published in the French newspaper Liberation. They demanded “the renunciation of any kind of execution, freedom without delay and recognition of (Ms Ashtiani’s) innocence”.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said yesterday: “Independent nations do not allow other countries to interfere in their judicial affairs.”
He added: “Western nations must not pressurise and hype (the case) up . . . judicial cases have precise procedures, especially when it concerns murder. If a person committed a crime in Iran, that person is prosecuted, which is normal, especially if she has killed somebody. The heavier the sentence, the more meticulous we are in carrying it out. This is being done.”
Asked about the asylum offer made by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Mr Mehmanparast talked of a “plot in order to create problems in the very close relations with Brazil and Turkey”.
Ms Ashtiani, 43, has already suffered 99 lashes and served five years in prison for her alleged adultery.
Court documents show she was acquitted of murdering her husband, but the Iranian authorities have repeatedly resurrected that charge in recent days in an attempt to blunt international outrage. Last week, Ms Ashtiani appeared to acknowledge complicity in her husband’s murder in what was widely regarded as a forced confession on state-controlled television.
The regime has responded to international pressure by suspending her stoning sentence pending a review, but Ms Ashtiani’s supporters in the West fear she will be hanged instead.
Mr Ahmadinejad rejected Brazil’s asylum offer even though Brazil is one of the few large countries that has good relations with his government.
Mr Lula da Silva made the asylum offer as a result of rising domestic pressure for him to intervene. Ms Ashtiani’s plight has become a surprise issue in Brazil’s presidential election this October.
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