Despite Claims by Authorities, Stonings Are Still Carried Out in Iran
Despite claims by Iranian officials that stoning sentences are not carried out in Iran and that women who have been sentenced to death by stoning are merely imprisoned, a high official of the Islamic Republic of Iran's justice system, speaking on the condition of anonymity, stated that stoning sentences continue to be carried out. According to this source, IRI officials are careful to execute stoning sentences away from the general public and in locations where no information about the barbaric practice will leak out to any member of the media, especially foreign media, or to human rights organizations.
According to this senior member of IRI’s judiciary, “stonings are carried out precisely in accordance with Islamic traditions, but they are not executed the way they once were. And they are less frequent than they used to be. Nonetheless, they are still carried out in Tehran. For example, last year, a 32 year old woman named Masomeh who had been charged with having relations outside her marriage, was stoned in a room in Evin prison. Members of the judiciary repeatedly denounced newspaper reports that Masomeh had been stoned to death, even though they were fully aware that she had been exectued by stoning in Evin prison.”
In a high profile case, Masomeh had been sentenced to death by stoning for having married a man while she was still married, even though her husband, Ismail Arab-Amri, had forced her to wed young Ibrahim. Ismail himself had thrown a lavish wedding for Masomeh and Ibrahim as he planned multiple murders related to the union. First, Ismail murdered Ibrahim sister, Fatemeh, and disposed of her body. He then lured Ibrahim to a deserted location and murdered him. Ismail then proceeded to brutally murder his own two children, for, as he later explained to the authorities, he did not trust their mother and had suddenly become skeptical about their paternity. Arab-Amri was an Irqi man who had moved to Iran with his father when he was a child and had taken residence in the city of Varamin.
Before she was stoned to death, Masomeh had stated in court that she had met Ibrahim during the time that she had to travel back and forth from Varamin to Tehran for her son’s medical treatment. "I had not told him that I was married, but then again, I didn’t really have any type of a relationship with him," explained Masomeh. "However," she went on to state, "when my husband found out that we had met, he told me that I had to respond positively to his family’s request of my hand in marriage! He even told me to invite the family to house so as to properly ask for my hand in marriage. He threatened to kill me if I did not agree to marry Ibrahim."
"Ismail introduced himself as my uncle and had made it very clear that if I did not agree to marry ibrahim, he would kill me. That is why I had no choice but to go through with the marriage. Ismail had even forced our kids to call me 'aunt' in front of Ibrahim! Everything that has happened has been entirely based on Ismaeil’s doings and actions and no one else's. He wanted to kill me, but the police arrested him before he was able to carry out his plans."
Masomeh was sentenced to death by stoning for having committed the crime of “zena,” which encompasses a wide variety of acts by women and girls, including being married to more than one man at a time. Approximately six months ago, her death sentence was carried out in Evin prison. She had been imprisoned in the city of Varamin before that. Her husband was hanged to death for multiple murders.
