Two men convicted of adultery in the northeastern city of Mashhad were stoned to death in December, but a third convicted man escaped while the punishment was being carried out, a spokesman for Iran's judiciary said Tuesday.Ali Reza Jamshidi also said a moratorium on the controversial punishment, announced in 2002 by the head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, was an advisory rather than an edict.
"Judges can't act based simply on advisories by the head of the judiciary, since judges are independent," he said, according to the semiofficial Iranian Students' News Agency.
The European Union, the United Nations and human rights advocates inside and outside Iran have decried stoning, which is enshrined in the country's Islamic legal code as a punishment for homosexuality and adultery. Condemned men are buried in sand up to their waists, and women up to their necks, and are pelted with stones until they die or manage to escape. Under the law, a condemned person's life is spared if he can free himself.