Iran lifts death by stoning sentences - but orders 300 lashes and 10 year jail sentences instead



Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reduced the sentences of four people originally sentenced to death by stoning

Iran has decided to spare the lives of four people sentenced to death by stoning and is carrying out a review of similar cases, the judiciary said yesterday.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has commuted the stoning sentences for two convicts, but instead each will be given 300 lashes.



Two others will be jailed for ten years.

Defence lawyers last month said at least eight women and one man had been sentenced to stoning in the near future.

The group, ranging in age from 27 to 43, had convictions for prostitution, incest or adultery.

'The issued verdicts for all of these cases will not be carried out for now,' judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi said.

'In a few of the cases, the people involved have asked for forgiveness and their request is under review,' Jamshidi said.

The defence lawyers have urged parliament to remove stoning and other corporal punishments from law books.

The last officially reported stoning in the Islamic Republic was carried out on a man a year ago for sexual offences.



It drew criticism from rights groups, the European Union and a top U.N. official.

Iran's judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi ordered a moratorium on stoning in 2002.

According to Iran's Islamic penal code, men convicted of adultery should be buried up to their waists and women up to their chests for stoning.



Stones used should not be large enough to kill the person immediately.

Amnesty International earlier this year called on Iran to immediately abolish "this grotesque punishment" and said many of those awaiting execution by stoning were sentenced after grossly unfair trials.

The Iranian authorities routinely dismiss charges of rights abuses, saying they are following sharia, or Islamic law.

Iran responds to Western criticism of its rights record by pointing to what it says are abuses in the West, such as detainees held by the United States in Guantanamo Bay.