Iranian attorney Mohammad Mostafaei missing, government arrests family

Human rights abuses can be like a rock thrown into a pond, with waves rushing from the center to engulf the concerned and uninvolved alike. Iran is providing a horrible example.

At the center is Sakineh Mohamadi Ashtiani. Ashtiani is a 43-year-old widow. She was convicted of committing adultery. Adultery is defined in Article 83 of the Iranian penal code: 'Adultery in the following cases shall be punishable by stoning:  . . . (2) Adultery of a married woman with an adult man provided the woman is permanently married and has had intercourse with her husband and is able to do so again.'

Since Ashtiani is obviously unmarried, this means that she was essentially convicted of the non-existent capital crime of having sex. Executing a person for adultery is revolting enough (and don't forget that Ashtiani has already suffered 99 lashes for her "crime"); but Iran has not even followed its own laws--barbaric as they are--in her case.

As Article 83 proves, death by stoning is not an extra-judicial custom or aberration, but part of the mullocracy's legal system. Nor is it an unused relic of the past, as shown by the recent film dramatization, "The Stoning of Soraya M." But in Ashtiani's case, a roar of worldwide protest made Iran back down, and the ill-named Justice Ministry announced that Ashtiani would not be stoned to death (carefully leaving open the possibility that she would yet be hanged).

Ashtiani's case became a cause celebre in part through the efforts of her lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaei. The government therefore launched a campaign of harassment against him. In his own words: ""Today I was again contacted after being interrogated, I was summoned through a telephone call. I don't know what the problem is this time. At any rate, tomorrow I have to go to the Evin prosecutor's office. Maybe they will arrest me, I don't know."

Since that July 23 blog entry, Mostafaei has disappeared. At first it seemed that the government had arrested him. But it now seems more likely that he has gone into hiding to avoid arrest.

And the circle widens. Mostafaei's wife, Fereshteh Halimi, and her brother, Farhad Halimi, were arrested on July 24. It is a straightforward hostage-taking: their lawyer, Hassan Aghakhani, reports that the authorities have said: "'Give us Mostafaei and we'll let these two go."

Will the circle widen still further? Is Aghakhani at risk? His family? Ashtiani's sons? A regime cannot forever repress a population that increasingly rejects it. But its expanding circles of repression can do immense harm before it finally totters and falls.