Times to Iran Woman: Sorry About Lashing

As if getting sentenced to death by stoning isn't bad enough: The Times of London is apologizing today to the Iranian woman who got an additional 99 lashes after the newspaper wrongly identified her as a bareheaded woman in a photo. The newspaper previously issued a correction, but today denounced the lashing as "simply a pretext." "The regime's purpose is to make Ms. Ashtiani suffer for an international campaign to save her that has exposed so much iniquity," it said.

"Publishing the photo provided a judge an excuse to sentence my poor mother to 99 lashes on the charge of taking a picture unveiled," Ashtiani's son tells the AP. But the lawyer who once represented Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani in Iran said from Paris that it was not certain if there really had been a new conviction and sentence over the photograph. (More Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani stories.)