IRAN JUSTICE

Iran TV Shows Stoning Woman Recreate Murder Share Comments (23)
12:03pm UK, Saturday December 11, 2010

Andy Jack, Sky News Online

A woman sentenced to be stoned to death in Iran for adultery has been filmed by state television confessing and re-enacting the murder of her husband.
State-run English language Press TV said its half-hour film was meant to show the other side of a story that has been misrepresented by international media.

But it may only serve to prompt yet more questions about human rights and press freedom in Iran.

Following an international outcry, Sakineh Ashtiani's sentence was suspended in September.

It is not clear why she had agreed to take part in the film.

It shows her acting out her alleged role in the murder of her husband, for which she faces possible hanging.

Ms Ashtiani is shown injecting her husband with a sedative before an actor playing her lover arrives to attach wires to his feet and neck and plug them into an electrical socket.

"He had decided to kill my husband by electrocuting him," she says in the interview.

The reconstruction is interspersed with actual photographs of the dead man, Ibrahim Abedzadeh, with vivid burns on his body. He was murdered in 2005.

Earlier this week, pictures from the video wrongly led to campaigners to believe Ms Ashtiani had been released.