An Iranian woman accused of adultery will not be executed today, France's foreign minister said, citing a telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart.
German-based human rights group the International Committee Against Stoning said yesterday Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani would be hanged today instead of stoned, although Iranian authorities have declined to comment on the issue.
Ms Ashtiani's stoning sentence was suspended earlier this year after prominent political and religious figures called it medieval, barbaric and brutal. Brazil, a close ally of Iran, offered to give the 43-year-old mother of two asylum.
"Manouchehr Mottaki assured me that Iranian legal authorities had not yet reached a verdict in the affair relating to (Ashtiani) and that the information regarding her alleged execution did not correspond to reality," France’s Bernard Kouchner said in a statement.
He added he had spoken to Mr Mottaki this morning asking him to renounce the execution and grant her a pardon. Officials in Iran were not immediately available to comment.
"We call on the Iranian authorities to respect basic human rights, cease their policy of repression and intimidation and release those who are currently being held without justification," Mr Kouchner said, adding that he had also asked why Ms Ashtiani's lawyer and son had also been jailed.
An Iranian government spokesman said in September that Ms Ashtiani's adultery conviction was under review but the charge of being complicit in the murder of her husband was still pending.
Under the Islamic law in force in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, murder is punishable by hanging, adultery by stoning.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fended off questions about the case from reporters when he attended the UN general assembly in September, saying it had been fabricated by hostile Western media and called the United States hypocritical for its record on executions.
The case has worsened relations between Iran and the West, which are locked in a dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme, and was complicated when two Germans were arrested in Iran while conducting an interview with Ms Ashtiani's son.
According to Amnesty International, Iran is second only to China in the number of executions it carries out. It put to death at least 346 people in 2008.
Reuters