Epress.am News from Armenia
Confusion surrounds the fate of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the woman whose sentence of death by stoning for adultery in Iran triggered an international outcry, reports The Guardian.
Campaigners initially claimed victory last night after photographs from state-run Press TV showed her meeting her son, Sajad, at her home in Osku, north-west Iran, boosting hopes that she had been suddenly released.
However, a preview of an interview with Mohammadi Ashtiani broadcast by the station late last night raised questions about whether she had actually been released from prison, or whether Iranian authorities had merely taken her to her home to collect evidence against her and film a confession.
In a short clip she is seen to say: “We planned to kill my husband.”
Early this morning Press TV denied the reports that she had been released and said that she had accompanied a team of TV production of the news channel to her house “to recount details of killing of her husband at the crime scene.”
Press TV said: “Contrary to a vast publicity campaign by Western media that confessed murderer Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani has been released, a team of broadcast production team with the Iran-based Press TV has arranged with Iran’s judicial authorities to follow Ashtiani to her house to produce a visual recount of the crime at the murder scene.”
Press TV hinted that Mohammadi Ashtiani will appear on its “Iran Today” programme on Friday night to “shed light on the higways and byways of the murder account with multiple interviews with people and individuals involved in the case.”
The move came weeks after Iran signalled it might spare the life of Mohammadi Ashtiani, 43, a mother of two who has been in Tabriz prison since 2006, and who faced execution by stoning for “having an illicit relationship outside marriage.”
Photo: Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani with her son Sajjad at home in northwestern Iran. (AFP/Getty Images)