Stoning Lawyer's Family Arrested

Iran has issued an arrest warrant for a lawyer who has been fighting to save a woman from death by stoning and taken his wife and brother-in-law into custody. Mohammad Mostafaei was interrogated for hours on Saturday before being released. Authorities then issued a warrant for his arrest; when they couldn't find him, they arrested his wife and brother-in-law in an effort to force him to return to custody, human rights activists tell the Guardian.

The execution of Sakineh Mohammedie Ashtiani for adultery was put on hold after an international outcry. Authorities have been interrogating her and her two sons to try to find out who spread the story to the international media. Her "sentence is not Mostafaei's first stoning case, he has defended many others against execution by stoning but it was Sakineh's story which took world attention and made the Iranian authorities angry," an activist for the Iran Committee Against Stoning says.
(More stoning stories.)