Iranian lawyer missing after interrogation over his support for adulterer who faced stoning

Iranian lawyer missing after interrogation over his support for adulterer who faced stoning

By Mail Foreign Service

Last updated at 10:53 AM on 27th July 2010

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The lawyer responsible for representing an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery has gone missing and his wife and brother-in-law have been arrested, after he launched an international campaign to publicise her plight.

Mohammad Mostafaei had taken on the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who was convicted of having an illicit affair with two men. He forced the Iranian Government to back down from stoning her to death, but it is believed she still faces death by other means.

He won support from celebrities and governments around the world, including the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He has described the43-year-old mother-of-two's 'absolutely illegal bogus conviction' in interviews around the world.

Missing: Mohammed Mostafaei (left) disappeared after a night of interrogration by Iranian authorities over his defence of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani (right), who was initially sentenced to death by stoning before the country's government backed down, but did not rue out another method of execution

Officers ransacked his Tehran office and interrogated him for four hours in the infamous Evin prison before releasing him on Saturday. He was then re-detained and released once more, before a warrant was issued for his arrest.

But when authorities were unable to find him, his wife Fereshteh Halimi and her brother Farhad Halimi were locked up instead.

Amnesty Internation has supported Mr Mostafaei's human rights campaigning. Its UK campaigns director Tim Hancock said: 'Mohammed Mostafaei is a lawyer doing his job, trying to defend his client. he should be left alone to practise the law, not subjected to harrassment and intimidation.'

'It is ridiculous that they [officials] have taken Mostafaei's family as ransom, they have somehow taken them hostage. This confirms what Sakineh's son wrote in his public letter, that there's no justice in Iran,"human rights activist Mina Ahadi told The Guardian.

'Mohammadi Ashtiani's sentence is not Mostafaei's first stoning case, he has defended many others against execution by stoning but it was Sakineh's story which took world attention and made the Iranian authorities angry.'

Barbaric: A woman is pictured being buried before she was stoned to death in Iran. The punishment has been written into the country's penal code since the Islamic Revolution in 1979

Soheila Vahdati, an Iranian activist who is based in California, said: 'Mostafaei is not a normal lawyer, he is also a human rights activist and he has represented several stoning cases and juvenile offenders in Iran.

'Mostafaei writes regularly for Iranian media and his blog and his role in making Iranians aware of the human rights abuses in Iran has made it difficult for the Iranian regime to tolerate him anymore.'