As The Gulf News reports, the big debate raging in the Iranian judiciary is... stoning or hanging for adultress women?:
An Iranian official said yesterday he was waiting for orders on whether to stone or hang a woman convicted of adultery, the latest in a chain of  death sentences passed against women for "fornication". The official from Iran's conservative judiciary said Hajieh Esmailvand's prison sentence, that began in January 2000, would end in less than a month a jail term in the northern city of Jolfa that was always intended as a precursor to execution.
"Her [death] sentence is approved by the Supreme Court, but there are no orders to carry out the sentence. We do not yet know if it is by stoning or hanging," he said. Hanging is the most usual death penalty in Iran but some adulterers have been stoned. Stoning has sparked scathing international criticism, with victims being buried up to their midriffs and then pelted to death with medium-size stones that should not be so large as to kill instantly.
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This is, in a word, digusting. On so many levels. And for people of conscience, it is, in a word, unacceptable.
UPDATE: In a trial broadcast on state television, a woman in Iranian has been declared insane and institutionalized for keeping six cats in her home: A Tehran court put a young woman on trial for keeping six kittens in her apartment, the state television reported yesterday. The state television aired the court proceedings in which the judge in branch 19 of Tehran’s court questioned the woman about why she was keeping the kittens in her apartment and how she was feeding them... At the end of the trial, the judge ruled that the woman suffered from mental illness and ordered her confined to Razi Sanitarium in the capital. Razi sanitarium is among the worst kept facilities in the entire country, where patients do not receive adequate care due to staff shortages and lack of psychiatrists and mental health specialists.
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In this case, the judgment of insanity has been misapplied. It is the judge and the system he represents that are insane. Can we remain passive onlookers?
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