In the Ukraine, a teen age Muslim girl was stoned to death for entering a beauty contest. Katya Koren, 19, was found dead in a village in the Crimea region near her home. Friends say she liked wearing fashionable clothing, and came in 7th in a beauty contest. Her body was found buried in a forest and was found a week after she disappeared. Police are looking at 3 Muslim youths as suspects in the murder.
One of the three – named as 16-year-old Bihal Gaziev – is under arrest and told police that Katya had ‘violated the laws of Sharia’. Gaziev has said he has no regrets about her death. Stoning is a divided topic among Muslims, with some groups interpreting it as Islamic law and others disagreeing. In Amnesty International’s annual report on death sentences worldwide, issued in April, there were no reports of judicial executions carried out by stoning in 2010.
But there are new death sentences by stoning reportedly imposed in Iran, the Bauchi state of Nigeria and Pakistan. And now, there are at least 10 women and four men remained under sentence of death by stoning at the end of the year in Iran, where adultery is the only crime which carries that penalty under Sharia law. The barbaric practice was thrown into the international spotlight last year when an Iranian woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery after suffering years of abuse at the hands of her drug addict husband.
She was allegedly beaten and sold for sex by opium-addict Ebrahim Ghaderzade, who she is accused of killing. She was jailed for ten years for murder and sentenced to death for adultery. She was also convicted of having illicit relations for which she received 99 lashes. The sentence was eventually suspended after much outcry worldwide. And the European Union calls the stoning barbaric. The Vatican pleaded for clemency and Brazil, which has tried to intervene in Iran’s stand-off with the West over its nuclear programme, offered Miss Ashtiani asylum.
The Islamic republic says the death penalty is essential to maintain law and order and is applied only after exhaustive judicial proceedings. Murder, rape, armed robbery, drug trafficking and adultery are all punishable by death in Iran.
