Brazil urges Iran 'gesture' over woman to be stoned to death

RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil on Wednesday urged Iran to make a "humanitarian gesture"

Brazilian FM urges Tehran for 'humanitarian gesture' that could be 'good for Iran', its image

towards a woman its courts have condemned to death by stoning for adultery.

"Who can say that a humanitarian gesture won't be good for Iran, for its image in the world?" Foreign Minister Celso Amorim asked at a university students' conference in Rio de Janiero.

The sentence against the Iranian woman, Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two, has drawn an outcry from many countries and prompted protests in Europe.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on July 31 appealed to his Iranian counterpart and friend, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to allow the woman to be given asylum by Brazil

Will the Iranian's listen to Celso Amorim's sound advice?

But the Iranian government looked askance at the offer, saying Lula was being "emotional" and was ignorant of the details of the case.

Officials now say Mohammadi-Ashtiani was not only convicted of having extramarital sex, but also of conspiring to murder her husband. Initial reports, though, said she was found not guilty of the murder charge.

Her stoning sentence has been temporarily suspended by Iranian judiciary chief Sadeq Larijani.

Brazil this week pushed on by formalizing its asylum offer through the Iranian embassy in Brasilia.

Amorim acknowledged the broadened allegations against Mohammadi-Ashtiani, saying: "She is not only accused of adultery but also of murder. I am not going to delve into this question because we can't judge how the trial was conducted.

"But the situation of this woman, faced with being stoned to death, is an affront to the feelings of Brazilians."

Mohammadi-Ashtiani's lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaie, fled to Norway after Iranian officials issued an arrest warrant for him and detained his wife.

The human rights lawyer, who says he has rescued 18 of 40 clients from the death penalty in Iran in recent years, said he was considering seeking asylum in the Scandinavian country.

The heightened attention being given to Mohammadi-Ashtiani meant "I do not think she will be hurt... The Iranian authorities have already paid a huge price for the case (and) the international reputation of Iran has already been negatively affected because of the way it has been handled," he said