I don't know if you actually read what you post here, but the numbers quoted in "Women and the Death Penalty in Modern Iran" (at <http://www.geocities.com/richard.clark32@btinternet.com/iranfem.html>) that you cite above confirms the BBC report that, even before the official 2002 moratorium, stoning was "extremely rare" ("Iran Stops Stoning of Women Adulterers," 27 December, 2002, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2609597.stm>).
The 21st-century executions of women in Iran that the article identifies are mostly for the sort of crime for which both men and women can get punished and which can lead to death sentences in other countries where death penalty is still in use, though exceptions exist (one case of drug trafficking is mentioned if we are to believe the article's description of the charges):
"killing a prison warder during an escape attempt"; "for the murder of Alieh's husband"; "drug trafficking"; "convicted of killing a 65 year old woman in 1997"; "confessed to poisoning her husband with soup and then stabbing him to death with the assistance of her lover, who was hanged on the same day"; "strangled to death an old woman before robbing her house"; "for the murder of her husband"; "convicted of the murder of her sister-in-law"; "condemned for taking part in the murder of the husband of a friend"; "convicted of strangling a 70 year old man and his 11 year old grandson in 1999" "running a brothel" and "luring young girls and women into prostitution"; "for the murder of her 78 year old father-in-law"; "Roya had agreed to a 'temporary marriage,' permitted under Iranian law, to Mohammad Kouhpayeh, her employer. When the marriage contract expired, she married another man, also called Mohammad. Roya demanded that her former husband return some photos but he refused, and she and her new husband murdered him in 1999"; "convicted of murdering an older woman, Maryam A."
The case of Atefeh Rajabi is the only one that can be attributed to gender oppression.*
It is much better to oppose death penalty in general, no matter what crimes are, since most executions result from murder cases.
On 11/17/06, Michael Pugliese <michael.098762001 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jeesh, Christian theocrat John Whitehead, oh Hentoff, anyway...
> http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0638,hentoff,74473,6.html
> >...September 17th, 2006 7:29 PM
>
> On . . . June 29, 2006, a court in the Islamic Republic of Iran
> sentenced Malak Ghorbany, a 34-year-old mother of two
> http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4825
> Sun. 11 Dec 2005
> The woman, only identified by her first name, Massoumeh,
Iran Focus being a MEK-identified Web site*, it is impossible to believe anything it says unless it gets confirmed by other sources that have at least a little more credibility than it.
As for Malak Ghorbany, Amnesty International says her case is being reviewed: <http://news.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE131132006?open&of=ENG-370>.
This most likely belongs in the category of cases where, "even if such sentences were passed by lower courts, they were overruled by higher courts and 'no such verdicts have been carried out'" ("Iran Denies Execution by Stoning," 11 January, 2005, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4166137.stm>). Are you going to let us know if these two women don't get stoned or executed?
* In the USA, gender bias -- a bias against men in this case -- tends to make it unlikely that women get executed at all even when they commit the same crimes for which many men get executed:
<blockquote><http://www.abanet.org/irr/hr/fall96/genderbias.html> Why Women Aren't Executed: Gender Bias and the Death Penalty
Fall 1996 Human Rights Magazine
By Thad Rueter
The facts are simple. In 1977, Guinevere Garcia murdered her daughter, and later received a 10-year sentence for the killing. Four months after her release, she killed her estranged husband during a robbery attempt. This time, the court imposed the death penalty.
Garcia had refused to appeal her sentence, and opposed efforts to save her. Death penalty opponents turned to Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar, who, as a state legislator, voted to restore the death penalty.
The facts of the case swayed his opinion. Just hours before the scheduled execution, Edgar commuted Garcia's sentence to life without parole, his first such act in more than five years in office.
The fact that Garcia escaped her execution isn't so unusual.
Since the beginning of the colonial era, 20,000 people have been lawfully executed in America, but only 400 of them have been women, including 27 who were found guilty of witchcraft. In the 23 years since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment, 5,569 total death sentences have been given out by courts, 112 to women. Of these 112, only one has been executed (Velma Barfield in 1984), compared with 301 men.
Leigh Beinen, a Northwestern University law professor who studies the gender bias in capital cases nationwide, thinks the reason so few women face execution has to do with the symbolism that's central to the death penalty.
"Capital punishment is about portraying people as devils," she says. "But women are usually seen as less threatening."
Juries and judges tend to find more mitigating factors in capital cases involving women than in ones involving men, Beinen explains. Women who kill abusive spouses, for example, are often seen as victims. Women are more likely to kill someone they know without any premeditation, which is considered less serious than killing a stranger, while some women are presented by defense attorneys as operating under the domination of men. And Garcia's case, according to Edgar, was not "the worst of the worst."
"Putting women in docks provokes community ambivalence," says Beinen, pointing out that by the end of the Susan Smith trial last year, which left the young mother convicted of drowning her two toddler sons, initial demands for the death penalty had largely petered out.</blockquote>
** About MEK and its US backers, see <http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/3280>. Ordinary Iranians in diaspora think about MEK like this: Nema Milaninia, <http://www.iraniantruth.com/?p=802>. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>