The regime in Iran forces Sakineh Ashtiani to testify against herself on state-run TV

PR No.41
August 11, 2010

According to the latest news received by International Committee Against Stoning the regime in Iran has broadcast an interview with Sakineh Ashtiani, sentenced to be either stoned or hanged by the regime. In the interview she speaks against her lawyer, Mohammad Mostafai, and against the international campaign to save her. The report goes on to say that the state-run TV has further put together interviews with a few inhabitants of Oskoo, Azerbaijan, Sakineh’s native town, in which they express their inclination to see her executed.

This latest episode of TV serial, ‘confession’, in Iran is, as usual, nothing but a farce to the eyes of the people in Iran as well as to all those around the world familiar with the regime and the workings of its media. The fact of the matter is that the Islamic regime is under the illusion that it can, by employing such scandalous means, reduce the pressure of the worldwide, snowballing campaign against it, and thus prepare the ground for sakineh’s execution. All it has accomplished, however, is coercing a victim, for four years held in captivity and relinquished to the incubus of being stoned to death, to appear on state TV and make fitting ‘confessions’!

We maintain it is evident that such masquerades have not only been already revoltingly exposed to the human mind around the world but also long since managed to bring up only the innermost humane abhorrence and anger in it. And worldwide abhorrence and anger cannot help but deepen and widen in this case as long as committing and masquerading state crime continues in general in Iran.

International Committee Against Stoning (ICAS) calls on all individual and organized defenders of the rights of human beings to emphatically condemn the Islamic regime’s inhuman treatment of Sakineh Ashtiani, and to proactively rise up to her defense.

In summary, we call on one and all of civilized humanity to stand up to the latest crime committed by regime against the person as well as the human rights of Sakineh, and remain absolutely steadfast in their defense of her.

Mina Ahadi
Spokesperson
International Committee Against Stoning (www.stopstonningnow.com)
International Committee Against Execution (www.notonemoreexecution.org)
Email: minaahadi@aol.com
Tel: 0049 (0) 1775692413

August 11, 2010

CNN’s report on Sakineh Ashtiani’s appearance on state-run Iranian TV