Is Virginia's Death-Row Woman, US's Sakineh Ashtiani?
Sunday, 26 September 2010 10:42 Reporter
A 41-year-old American grandmother diagnosed with borderline mental retardation has been executed despite thousands pleading for her execution to be canceled.
Iran believes her case reflected "the double standards" of the American government, comparing her case to that of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43-year-old Iranian woman sentenced to death for killing her husband.
Thousands had pled for Teresa Lewis execution to be canceled, including author John Grisham and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but the US Supreme Court and Virginian Governor Bob McDonnell refused to cancel the execution.
Iran accused the US of human rights violations.
The parliamentary human rights committee said her case reflected "the double standards" of the American government, comparing her case to that of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43-year-old Iranian woman sentenced to death for adultery and killing her husband.
"We will file an official complaint to the international community against the US if the sentence is administered," Hossein Naghavi, an Iranian MP and the spokesman for the committee, told the Fars news agency. Several Iranian MPs have expressed concerns over Lewis's execution and have asked the US for her sentence to be commuted.
America was one of the several countries to express outrage over Ashtiani's case, but while Ashtiani is still being in jail, the American grandmother executed by lethal injection.
Last week, the US Supreme Court turned down her appeal for a stay of execution despite doctors repeatedly saying that she was not smart enough to have masterminded the murders. She was judged to have an IQ of 72, the Guardian reported.
Lewis had admitted to hiring two accomplices. She, however, had insisted that she did not pull the trigger. Lewis' lawyers had revealed evidence that showed one of the gunmen had masterminded the plot. The two men received life sentences.
Iranian news agencies highlighted similarities between the cases, reporting that Lewis, like Ashtiani, had been convicted of "having an extramarital relationship". MPs criticised the US for sentencing Lewis to death while sparing the lives of the killers – as happened in Ashtiani's case.
The Fars news agency criticised the US media for "being silent in the past seven years Lewis has been kept in jail". "On her execution day she'll wish for a better country whose judiciary would listen to its people rather than intervening in the internal affairs of other countries," it said.
"It's not been a long time since the American media attacked Iran over the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani ... Lewis's case has similarities with Mohammadi Ashtiani's case with the difference that Sakineh has been found guilty for the crime she committed but there are lots of ambiguities in Teresa's case. The US and the American media tried their best to make a symbol of human rights out of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani because of the background of their atrocities towards Iran but after seven years, human rights organisations have been silent for Teresa. This shows their double standard in relation to other counties."
Iranian MPs Zohreh Elahian and Salman Zaker also condemned the US over Lewis's sentence which they say is "contradictory to international standards". They have called for a judicial review.
In an interview with ABC last weekend in New York, Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied Ashtiani had ever been given a death sentence by stoning.
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Is Virginia's Death-Row Woman, US's Sakineh Ashtiani?