Ofcom clears Iranian TV station over murder reconstruction

Ofcom has ruled that Iran's state-run Press TV station, which has offices in London, did not breach the UK's broadcasting rules in transmitting a programme that showed an Iranian woman participating in the reconstruction of her alleged part in the murder of her husband.

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, 43, whose sentence of death by stoning for adultery triggered an international outcry, was taken from prison to her home in Osku, in Iran's East Azarbaijan province, last December. She appeared in front of a camera for Press TV recounting how she rendered her husband unconscious before the killer electrocuted him.

Ashtiani's 22-year-old son, Sajad Ghaderzadeh, played the part of her husband in the broadcast. Human rights campaigners described it as a forced confession aimed at collecting new evidence against her and distracting world attention from Iran's embarrassment over the case.

Press TV is Iran's English-language state television station and has its main overseas office in London, where many of its programmes are made. People in Iran do not have access to the channel. Opponents of the Iranian regime believe the channel is used for propaganda purposes.

In response to a complaint made by the Iranian human rights campaigner Fazel Hawramy, who asked whether it was ethical for Press TV to make the imprisoned son play his murdered father, Ofcom said in a letter, seen by the Guardian, that the broadcaster had not breached its code.

"Given the broadcaster's assurances that both Sakineh Ashtiani and her son willingly participated in this programme, we considered that the context was not materially misleading so as to cause harm and offence," Adam Baxter, standards executive of the media regulator, wrote to Hawramy.

The broadcast of the programme by Press TV caused outrage among human rights campaigners who described it as a 'forced confession' aimed at collecting new evidences against her and distracting the world's attention from the embarrassment for the Iranian regime over the stoning case.

Ofcom went on to say: "Given the high public salience of the case of Sakineh Ashtiani in Iran, and across the world generally, we considered that it was unsurprising for this matter to be discussed on a serious analysis programme such as this, which focused on Iranian-related matters."

admitted it was "unusual for a prisoner facing an allegation of murder to take part in a reconstruction of their alleged crime", but ruled: "It is an editorial matter for broadcasters as to what issues and content they cover in their services, and how they cover them, as long as they comply with the code."

Ofcom added: "The fact that both [Mohammadi Ashtiani and her son] did not appear to be in any obvious distress in their appearances on screen" was another factor it had considered in reaching its decision that "the content, though potentially offensive to some, could be justified by the context".

Ghaderzadeh had been arrested by Iranian authorities before the programme after he spoke to foreign media in support of his mother.

Hawramy, who writes for a human rights forum called Kurdishblogger, said: "It is disappointing for me to see that Ofcom has based its conclusions on the assurances Press TV's editors have given to them. How come Press TV has access to Ms Ashtiani while she, herself, has been denied access to her lawyer? And while one of her lawyers was forced to flee Iran and the other one remains in jail? Why is it that independent journalists were not allowed to access her unrestrictedly while Iran's state journalists were given permission to?"

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, an Iranian human rights activist based in Norway who is also a spokesman for the NGO Iran Human Rights, said: "I was simply shocked by reading Ofcom's response. One would expect that Ofcom has sufficient knowledge of Iran's history of using televised confessions, and the fact that Iran is one of the world's biggest jailers of journalists. Iranian authorities claim that prisoners appear 'willingly' on the TV and confess against themselves but very often these confessions have been used as new evidence for the death sentences the prisoners have been given afterwards."

According to Ofcom's letter, Press TV has responded to the regulator and has said: "The complaints are based on the complainants' assumptions that Ms Ashtiani and her son were forced to appear in the programme and the reconstruction scene. Being that this assumption is false, there is no validity to the complaints. Press TV did not 'make' or 'force' Ms Ashtiani and her son to do anything they were uncomfortable with. Both participated willingly, and gave no indication that they felt humiliation, distress or violation of their human dignity at any time prior to, during, or subsequent to the filming and broadcast of the programme."

Ofcom said it had received three complaints over Press TV's programme involving Ashtiani.

According to Amnesty International, Ashtiani was sentenced to death by stoning for "adultery while married" but was also given a 10-year prison term in 2006 for the murder of her husband, which her lawyer said later was subsequently reduced to five years for "complicity" in the crime.

Last October her son and her lawyer, Houtan Kian, were arrested, with two German journalists who were detained after trying to interview her family. The journalists were released after a few months. Sakineh Ashtiani's stoning sentence was suspended last year, but she and her lawyer remain in jail.

Source: The Guardian