Religion of Peace!

Daily mail: A stoning pit, in which she will be buried up to her neck, has already been prepared for her.

Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen, launching an "urgent" appeal, said: "To execute anyone by stoning is barbaric and disgraceful, to execute a woman for adultery in this cruel way simply beggars belief.

"It is imperative that Iran's head of judiciary takes immediate steps to stop the shameful stoning of Mokarrameh Ebrahimi while clarifying what has happened to her co-accused Jafar Kiani."


Tehran stopped official stonings in 2002 following international pressure. But judiciary spokesman Alireza

Jamshidi confirmed that Jafar Kiani had been killed on Thursday. "The verdict was implemented because it was definitive," he said.

Under Islamic law a male convict is buried up to the waist with his hands tied behind his back, while a female is usually buried up to her neck. Spectators and officials then carry out the execution by hurling rocks and stones.

The stones are deliberately chosen to be large enough to cause pain, but not big enough to kill the person in just one or two strikes.

Kiani and Ebrahimi were jailed in 1996 and their two children, one aged 11, are believed to live in prison with their mother.

The Iranian women's group Stop Stoning Forever say the couple were living together when they were first detained, with reports suggesting Mokarrameh had been thrown out of the family home by her husband.

Both the man and woman have children from their previous marriages.

Stoning was widely used after the 1979 Islamic revolution propelled hard line clerics into power, but in

2002 they were replaced with other means of punishment. Despite this, human rights groups say a man and a woman were stoned to death in 2006 in north-east Iran, after being convicted of adultery and murdering the woman's husband.

The stoning of Jafa Kiani brings to at least 110 the number of executions - by public hanging - carried in Iran this year.

The death penalty is automatically imposed for murder, rape, armed robbery, blasphemy, serious drug trafficking, repeated sodomy, adultery, prostitution, treason and espionage.

Of the 24 juvenile offenders executed in Iran since 1990, 11 were still children by the time they died. Others were held in prison until their 18th birthday before being hanged.

In May, the European Union criticised Tehran's human rights record and expressed concern about the use of the death penalty in the Islamic state.

Iran says it is acting on the basis of Islamic sharia law.

Last night it emerged that Mokarrameh Ebrahimi has been given a stay of execution while her case is reviewed. However human rights campaigners believe there may be little hope for her.

They point out that her lover was told two weeks ago that his death sentence had been suspended, only for him then to be executed last Thursday.