TEHRAN: Iran has amended its internationally condemned law on stoning convicted adulterers to death to allow judges to impose a different form of execution, according to the revision seen by AFP yesterday.
The controversial practice, in which stones are thrown at the partially buried offender, has provoked outcries from human rights organizations, international bodies and Western countries urging Iran to abandon it.
An article of Iran’s Islamic new penal code, published earlier this week, states that, “if the possibility of carrying out the (stoning) verdict does not exist,” the sentencing judge may order another form of execution pending final approval by the judiciary chief.
The article does not explain what is meant by the possibility of stoning not existing.
In Iran, executions are normally carried out by hanging.
At least 150 people may have been stoned in Iran since 1980, the International Committees against Execution and Stoning said in 2010.
According to local media, MPs had removed stoning altogether from the bill that they adopted. But the hard-line Guardians Council of clerics and jurists, which must approve all legislation before it enters into force, reinserted it, with the new amendment.
The last reported case of stoning was in 2009, when an unidentified man was stoned to death in the northern city of Rasht.
That came despite a directive in 2002 by then judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi to suspend the practice. His call failed to force any changes to the penal code.
Iran amends law on stoning
