IRANIAN WOMAN TO BE WHIPPED NOT STONED FOR ADULTERY: REPORT

Iran's judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi has commuted a sentence of stoning to death handed down to a woman convicted of adultery to 100 lashes. The woman, identified only as Kobra N., 48, was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of her husband and engaging in an adulterous relationship, the daily Etemad Melli newspaper reported. She was sentenced to eight years in prison for the first crime and stoning to death for the second. The report said the woman served the eight-year jail sentence and was kept in prison for another five years awaiting the sentence of stoning to be carried out. It added that her husband, a drug addict, had forced her into prostitution. The murderer, identified as Habib A., has been freed after serving a 10-year jail term. According to the newspaper, Ayatollah Shahrudi's decision to spare the woman leaves nine other people, seven women and two men, in Iranian prisons awaiting execution by stoning.