For shits and giggles, I clicked on the Breitbart story, which mentions two rather obscure French sources (a
blog and a
website) both dedicated to Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, an Azerbaijani woman living in Iran who was convicted in 2006 of complicity in the murder of her husband. The international furor over her death sentence (by stoning) eventually led to a commutation (though not a pardon).
The added tidbit about her being sentenced to 99 lashings following a photo allegedly of her on the cover of the Times of London without wearing a head scarf
all refer back to the French sources, near as I can tell. That doesn't mean that they are unsubstantiated, just that there seems to be no collaboration (and certainly nothing from any official Iranian sources).
It should be remembered that the French have banned headscarves in public schools. It should also be borne in mind that French media, much like anglophone media, are slanted politically, and the blog linked above comes from Le Monde, which is extremely conservative (
Gaullist, actually).
As with every n00b who posts without bothering to search to see if a topic's been talked to death already or not, the OP deserves a lash or two for neglecting to find
this thread in the Women's Issues forum and this
infamous one here, started by his erstwhile buddy FaceKing :wink:
As I deplore the death penalty on principle, I find any application of it to barbaric and uncivilized, be it the result of Texas jurisprudence (
which executes the
developmentally disabled) or Sharia law. They are equally unjust IMO.
An investigative
report reveals that Texas continues to execute mentally retarded prisoners despite a US Supreme Court ban. The state has been basing its decisions on unreliable mental health testimony by a court-appointed psychologist.
...
In a Supreme Court ruling in 2002,
Atkins v. Virginia , it was decided that "executions of mentally retarded criminals are cruel and unusual." The impetus behind this decision was that, although mentally disabled people can distinguish between right and wrong, their ability to control impulsive behavior or learn from mistakes was curtailed.
