Iran’s state media announced Wednesday that Iran has suspended the use of stoning as a way to carry out the death penalty. According to AFP, Iran’s judiciary drafted legislation that would end stoning as a death penalty, the current Islamic punishment in Iran for adulterers.
Amnesty International reports in their call to end stoning in Iran, “The majority of those sentenced to death by stoning are women. Women are not treated equally with men under the law and by courts, and they are also particularly vulnerable to unfair trials because their higher illiteracy rate makes them more likely to sign confessions to crimes they did not commit.”
Amnesty International, the Volunteer Lawyer’s Network, the European Union, the Stop Stoning Forever Campaign, and many other human rights groups have been pressuring Iran to end this practice of execution for years. In 2002, Ayatollah Shahroudi, the head of Iran’s judiciary banned the practice of stoning but did not remove the laws from the books. Execution by stoning continued, including the stoning of Jafar Kiani in 2007, which sparked international outrage.
BBC News reports that eight women and one man are currently awaiting death by stoning in Iran.
