[Rhodes22-list] Human Rights (and lust)

[Brad Haslett]

This I why I don't hit on Muslim women (two separate articles).  Brad

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   Iranian sisters face stoning for adultery: report
<http://www.breitbart.com/partner.php?source=afp>   Feb 4 08:50 AM
US/Eastern
   Two Iranian sisters convicted of adultery face being stoned to death
after the supreme court upheld the death sentences against them, the Etemad
newspaper Monday quoted their lawyer as saying.

The two were found guilty of adultery -- a capital crime in Islamic Iran --
after the husband of one sister presented video evidence showing them in the
company of other men while he was away.

"Branch 23 of the supreme court has confirmed the stoning sentence," said
their lawyer, Jabbar Solati.

The penal court of Tehran province had already sentenced the sisters
identified only as Zohreh, 27, and Azar (no age given) to stoning, the daily
said.

Solati explained that the two sisters had initially been tried for "illegal
relations" and received 99 lashes. However in a second trial they were
convicted of "adultery."

The pair admitted they were in the video presented by the husband but argued
that there was no adultery as none of the footage showed them engaged in a
sexual act with other men.

"There is no legal evidence whereby the judge could have the knowledge for
issuing a stoning sentence," Solati said, adding that he had appealed to the
state prosecutor.

"The two sisters have been tried twice for one crime," Solati protested.

Under Iran's Islamic law adultery is theoretically punishable by stoning,
although in late 2002 judiciary head Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi
issued a writ suspending such executions.

However in July 2007, Jafar Kiani was stoned to death for adultery in a
village in the northwestern province of Qazvin in a rare execution by
stoning that provoked a wave of international outrage.

Capital offences in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, serious drug
trafficking and adultery. Iran currently makes more use of the death penalty
-- almost always by hanging -- than any other country apart from China.

Zohreh's husband -- who accused his wife and her sister in January 2007 of
having extra-marital affairs -- had planted a camera in his house in a bid
to catch them in the act.

"She did not treat me well and her actions made me feel she did not want to
live with me any more," said the husband, who was not named.

"To make sure I planted a camera in the house... When I watched the tape two
days after, I found out that she and her sister brought over men after I
left and had relationships with them," he said.

Zohreh said she had an edgy relationship with her husband because of the
strict limits he imposed on her life.

"I was a teacher and loved my job but my husband did not let me work... he
was always suspicious of me and thought our differences were because I had
an affair," she was quoted as saying by the daily.

"I do not approve the confessions that I made in the investigation phase and
I deny what I said," she said.

Etemad reported that the husband of the other sister, Azar, had not filed
any complaint against her.

-----------------------------------

Tuesday 5 February 2008 (28 Muharram 1429)

Coffee With Colleague Lands Woman in Trouble
<http://www.arabnews.com/?artid=106499>
Raid Qusti, Arab News —


RIYADH, 5 February 2008 — A Saudi mother of three, who works as a business
partner and financial consultant for a reputable company in Jeddah, didn't
expect that a trip to the capital to open the company's new branch office
would have her thrown behind bars by the Commission for the Promotion of
Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

Yara, a petite 40-year-old woman, was in tears yesterday after she narrated
to Arab News her encounter with a commission member that ended in high
drama.

Yara, who has been married for 27 years, said she spent several hours in the
women's section of Riyadh's Malaz Prison, was strip-searched, ordered to
sign a confession that she was in a state of "khulwa" (a state of seclusion
with an unrelated man) and for hours prevented from contacting her husband
in Jeddah.

Her crime? Having a cup of coffee with a colleague in a Starbucks.

Yara said she arrived in the capital yesterday morning from Jeddah to check
on the company's new office.

"The minute I came into the office my colleagues told me that we have an
issue with the electricity company and that we do not have power but that it
would be back on in half an hour," she said.

As they were waiting, they decided to go to the ground floor of the building
to have a cup of coffee in the family section of Starbucks. Family sections
are the only places where men and women can sit together in establishments
in Saudi Arabia. Officially, these sections are for families only, but in
practical terms these sections — usually in international chains like
Starbucks — become the only places where unrelated men and women can be
comfortable that they won't be harassed by commission members.

But yesterday Yara and her colleague found themselves in trouble with the
commission. One moment they were sitting together discussing brand equity
and sovereign wealth funds; the next moment she found herself in commission
custody.

Shortly after they took their coffee and Yara opened her laptop, a member of
the commission approached the two and demanded the man step outside.

"Then (the commission member) came to me and said: 'You need to come with
us. This man is not a relative,'" she said.

When she told the commission member that she wanted to contact her husband
by phone, he refused.

"I am the government," Yara quoted him as saying. He then ordered her to
come with him.

Yara described how the commission member had to wave a taxi down to begin
the hours-long process of punishing the woman for having a cup of coffee in
a public place with a colleague. When she hesitated about entering the taxi,
she said the commission member threatened her.

"I am the government and you have to get in," she said, recounting the words
of the commission member.

Inside the taxi, Yara said the commission member snatched her phone from her
as she tried to call her husband. She told Arab News that even the cab
driver felt uneasy but, knowing the power of the commission in Riyadh,
refrained from interfering.

Eventually the cab approached a GMC Suburban, the vehicle of choice for the
commission members, parked in front of one of the commission centers. Yara
pleaded with the cab driver not to leave her.

"I was begging him to stay with me," she said. But the taxi driver was
ordered to move on and Yara found herself locked in the back of the GMC.

Time passed, she said. Commission members came and went. She said they
preached to her about the grave sin she committed.

"Your husband is no good," she said, recounting the words of the commission
members. "He should not have let you do this."

She said she was admonished for traveling alone. The commission members told
her that her colleague admitted that they always went out together. (Later,
she learned that her colleague, a Syrian national, was also arrested. He
still remains in detention.)

"I told (the commission member) that I am a good Muslim, a mother of three,
and a God-fearing person who would never do shameful things," she told Arab
News in tears.

Last year, the Interior Ministry issued a ruling that the commission cannot
detain people and must pass them on to the police.

Yara said that she was handed a confession.

"He told me I needed to fingerprint this paper stating that I got my mobile
phone and bag back," she said. "When I told him my phone was still
confiscated, he threatened me: 'Just do it!'"

She said that she fingerprinted the paper under duress.

"I had no other choice ... I was scared for my life ... I was afraid that
they would abuse me or do something to me," she said, as she broke down in
tears again.

Then another person got into the GMC and switched on the engine.

"The next thing I saw from the window was that we were approaching a place
with a sign written on the outside: Malaz Prison," she said.

Inside the prison, Yara recounts being taken to a cell with a one-way
mirror. On the other side was a sheikh.

"I could not see him because there was a dark window," she said, adding that
each time she paused he would reprimand her, telling her what she did was
wrong. "He kept on telling me this is not allowed."

Yara told the sheikh that her husband knew where she was and what she was
doing. He then started writing a report. Another pre-written confession was
fingerprinted, she said. She pleaded with prison authorities to contact her
husband.

"They would not let me contact my husband," she said. "I told them...
please... my husband will have a heart attack if he does not know what has
happened to me."

She was not given a phone to call her husband. She was not given access to a
lawyer. "They stripped me," she said. "They checked that I had nothing with
me and threw me in the cell with all the others."

Meanwhile, Yara's husband Hatim, an executive director of a prominent
company, was in Jeddah when he received a phone call. "My friend contacted
me and told me that the commission had captured my wife," he said.

He booked the next flight to Riyadh and, after some strings were pulled,
Yara was out of jail.

"I look at this as if she had been kidnapped by thugs," said Hatim. "There's
really nothing else to it ... I know this has nothing to do with the
country, but these (people) are thugs. Unfortunately, they told her that
they are 'the government' so she could not resist."

The Syrian colleague was still in custody by the time Arab News went to
press. He is a senior financial analyst, who is described by acquaintances
as a devout Muslim whose mother teaches Qur'an recitation to children.