Iranian Sisters Sentenced To Death By Stoning For Chatting To Male Admirers

A woman falsely accused of committing adultery has been sentenced to death by stoning by an Iranian court. Her husband secretly taped video footage of her and her sister's meeting with male admirers to present proof that his wife had been promiscuous. The woman’s sister, has been sentenced to death too.

The two sisters called Zohreh and Azar, will meet a gruesome end. In Iran, women being sentenced to such a fate will be dug in the ground up to their breasts and stones are being thrown until they are dead. This is a long drawn out process because the stones thrown need to be, according to Iranian law prescriptions, big enough to injure, but not so big that the victim is dead within two stones´ throws.

The irony of this whole saga is that the two sisters were not doing anything wrong. The two, who appealed their case in a higher court after having been sentenced to lashes earlier on, claim that the footage shows that they had not committed adultery. The husband of Zohreh’s sister Azar did not press charges. At the moment, around nine women are awaiting a similar fate, as well as two men.

Death by stoning has been an issue within Iranian politics since 2002, when the Iranian legal system´s top official, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi, ordered a moratorium on the penalty and the Iranian parliament is working on a review of Iranian laws, which aims to eliminate death by stoning. But the penalty is definitely popular still because in recent years it has been applied in various cases. Amnesty International has also called for an immediate end to this brutal sentencing. Find out how you can take action here.