Iran Stays Execution By Stoning

Iranian authorities have halted the planned stoning to death of a man and woman convicted of adultery following international protests, it emerged tonight.

Mokarrameh Ebrahimi and an unnamed man, who have spent 11 years in prison, were due to be killed tomorrow in a cemetery in the town of Takestan in western Iran.

Western diplomats in Tehran and organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights' Watch had condemned the executions.

The Norwegian foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Stoere, summoned the Iranian ambassador to Oslo to protest that "stoning is a barbarian punishment" which violated human rights.

He also told the ambassador that the Norwegian parliament's foreign affairs committee would likely cancel a planned visit to Iran next week if the stoning was carried out.

He later told Norwegian news organizations that he had received information that Iranian judicial authorities had stayed the execution.

An Iranian justice official denied that any such stoning had been planned.

The pits in which Ms Ebrahimi and the man were to be placed had reportedly already been dug.

According to the Iranian penal code, men should be buried up to their waists and women up to their breasts.

The code also states that the stones used should "not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes; nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones".

The stoning was due to take place in public, reportedly in the presence of a judge, who was due to cast the first stone. Those present at the gathering were to continue the stoning until the pair were pronounced dead.

"Execution by stoning aggravates the brutality of the death penalty, being specifically designed to increase the victim's suffering since the stones are deliberately chosen to be large enough to cause pain, but not so large as to kill the victim immediately," Amnesty said.

Ayatollah Shahroudi, the head of Iran's judiciary, ordered a moratorium on execution by stoning in 2002, pending a decision on a permanent change in the law, apparently being considered by Iran's supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

But a law passed in September 2003 on the implementation of certain kinds of penalties, including stoning, appeared to undermine this moratorium.

There were no cases of stoning reported between 2002 and 2006, although Amnesty recorded cases carried out after May 2006, when a woman and a man were believed to have been stoned to death.

In its annual report in April, Amnesty cited Iran as one of four countries in which the number of executions had increased in 2006, bucking the worldwide trend towards fewer deaths.

The number of executions in Iran almost doubled to 177 from 94 last year, possibly linked to a crackdown on Baluchis. One-third of those executed came from this minority group.