PRIME MINISTER Ralph Gonsalves has become the first CARICOM leader to make public a plea to the government of Iran for an Iranian woman to be spared from execution on a charge of committing adultery. The woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashianti, a 43-year-old mother and widow, was originally condemned to be stoned to death for that alleged crime, according to Iran’s Islamic Penal Code
However, following a personal public appeal to the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadjinejad, by the Brazilian President, Luiz Ignacio Lula daSilva, in July, the Iranian authorities agreed to suspend the stoning death sentence.
It however explained that she could still be otherwise punished by execution on other charges, including the alleged murder of her husband.
In his letter earlier this month to President Ahmadinejad, released at the weekend, Prime Minister Gonsalves, who had paid an official visit last year to Iran, pleaded “for clemency and mercy” for Ashtiani, who has already been inflicted with 99 lashes even after denying confessing to the charges against her.
The Vincentian Prime Minister, in addressing the Iranian President as “my dear brother Mahmoud”, said he was making his “sincere and heartfelt plea of clemency and mercy” in the same spirit as that made previously by the President of Brazil, “my dear friend and brother” for the unfortunate woman.
President Lula had offered Ashtiani asylum in Brazil in his “friendship” plea to Iran. And in his letter to President Ahmadinejad, Prime Minister Gonsalves said he did not need to “reiterate the rationale for pleading for clemency and mercy” as done by the Brazilian Head of State.
But he stressed that “the grant of mercy is a gift from God applied by wise and caring leaders…”
Since Lula’s asylum offer, which was rejected by Iran, there has been no reports on the fate of Ashtiani whose lawyer had to subsequently flee Iran fearful for his life.