Grisly prime time game show with death row Ashtiani (News Feature)

By Farshid Motahari and Uta Winkhaus ( Dec 11, 2010, 15:45 GMT

Teheran - Iranian state television has trotted out condemned prisoner Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani several times.

But what aired during prime time viewing hours on Friday represented a whole new dimension in this high-profile case.

Using interviews and dramatic reenactments, the English-language Press TV channel reconstructed the murder of her husband at her hand - with the 43-year-old condemned woman as the on-screen 'star' of the show.

The mother of two was found guilty in 2006 and sentenced to death by stoning. The sentence spawned worldwide protests - not only owing to the severity of the sentence, but also to doubts as to the guilt of Mohammadi-Ashtiani.

The Iranian television reenactment was evidently aimed at defusing those doubts.

The 43-year-old prisoner was hauled out of her cell in the northern Iranian city of Tabris and was permitted to go home - for the benefit of the TV production team shooting the reenactment of her 'true crime' drama.

There she was, on screen, describing how she allegedly met her adulterous lover and let him have his way with her following a telephone flirt.

So as to cement their relationship, her lover came up with the idea of their doing away with her husband, she said on camera.

The plan was to make it look like suicide or an accident, she explained.

Next she reenacted the crime, step by step. The programme showed how Mohammadi-Ashtiani took a hypodermic from the cabinet, how she approached her sleeping husband and how she injected an anesthetic into his bottom.

Next, her lover fastened electrical cords to the unconscious man's feet, she said.

In the end it took several jolts of electricity to do him in, Mohammadi-Ashtiani told the international viewing audience. The circuit-breaker fuses blew out at one point.

Shortly afterward she felt 'pangs of guilt' and turned herself over to the police and made a confession. Finally, her lover was apprehended and confessed.

Precisely why the recording came into being is an open question. The English-language satellite channel is viewed as the Iranian mouthpiece abroad. Almost no one at home watches it.

And so the programme is being interpreted abroad as a message that Mohammadi-Ashtiani rightfully deserves to be stoned to death.

Press TV claims that there had never been any intention of actually carrying out the sentence, which is applied in Iran only in cases of adultery.

'In 2006 it was a symbolic sentence upheld in court unanimously by the judges,' Press TV pointed out.

The channel noted that Iranian judicial officials had decided in 2005 no longer to carry out stonings, but that that decision had not been implemented in time for the Mohammadi-Ashtiani trial.

It is unclear what penalty Mohammadi-Ashtiani will now face. She could conceivably be garrotted.

In a best-case scenario, her sentence would be commuted to a lengthy prison term.

But in the wake of this internationally broadcast confession, there is no chance whatsoever that she might walk free.

Read more about Iran Justice