Women in Iran are ‘slaves’ lawyer tells MEPs

A lawyer for the Iranian woman who faces a possible death sentence for alleged adultery and complicity in the murder of her husband has denounced the Tehran regime as maintaining slavery of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Mohammad Mostafaei was invited to address the European Parliament’s Human Rights Subcommittee.

On a visit to Brussels from his exile in Norway, the lawyer told euronews: “I think there are political reasons the Iranian regime is playing like this with Sakineh Ashtiani’s case: to deflect international community attention away from [other] human rights violations in Iran. While focusing on the Sakineh case, people outside the country forget about the arrests of journalists and political prisoners. This is the Iranian regime’s policy today.”

Officially, a sentence of stoning to death issued in 2006 was suspended in July this year but a review of the case is still in progress, according to the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Amid international pressure over the case, Tehran has defended stoning as an Islamic decree saying it can not be abolished, while underscoring that execution by hanging has priority over stoning.

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