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September 8, 2010

TEHRAN — An Iranian official has confirmed that the government halted the death sentence by stoning of a woman charged with adultery, but he reiterated that she was .

The official, Ramin Mehmanparast, a spokesman for ’s Foreign Ministry, was the highest-ranking Iranian official to formally acknowledge that Iran had suspended the woman’s stoning, a sentence that provoked and intensified criticism of Iran’s human rights record.

Mr. Mehmanparast made the comments at a weekly news conference here on Tuesday, saying that officials were reviewing the adultery charges against the woman, . But he said officials were still moving ahead with sentencing Ms. Ashtiani on charges that she assisted in the murder of her husband. A conviction on that charge could result in the death sentence or a prison term.

Iran had previously indicated it had lifted Ms. Ashtiani’s stoning sentence, even as it gave indications she would .

Ms. Ashtiani was convicted of adultery in 2006, but the charges of abetting murder emerged just weeks ago, as Iranian officials responding to a fusillade of criticism from human-rights groups and foreign leaders sought to tilt focus away from the adultery charges and portray Ms. Ashtiani as a killer.

Last month, Iranian state television broadcast with Ms. Ashtiani that it portrayed as a confession in her husband’s death. But human-rights groups condemned the broadcast, and Ms. Ashtiani’s lawyers said she agreed to appear in it only after being tortured in prison.

Mr. Mehmanparast said Ms. Ashtiani, 43, who is being held in Tabriz prison in northern Iran, was guilty of both adultery and murder, and suggested that her case did not merit the international scrutiny it had drawn.

“We think that this is a very normal case,” Mr. Mehmanparast told Reuters. “This dossier looks likes many other dossiers that exist in other countries.”

The latest high-profile condemnation came on Tuesday, when the president of the , José Manuel Barroso, called the stoning sentence in a speech and said it had “no justification under any moral or religious code.”