German Sentenced to Die for Having Sex With Muslim

An Islamic court in Iran has sentenced a German businessman to death for having sex with a Muslim woman.

On Saturday, sources close to the case identified the man as 54-year-old Helmut Hofer. They said the court sentenced him Monday for an illicit relationship with a 26-year-old Iranian woman he met during a business trip last year to Mashhad in northeastern Iran.

Under Iran’s Islamic laws, the crime Hofer is charged with is defined as adultery with a married woman or sex between a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man.

The crime is punishable by death, but the woman escaped that penalty and was sentenced to a lashing instead because she is unmarried, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. It was not known whether Hofer is married.

Legal experts in Iran said the nation’s high court probably will overturn the verdict. Under Islamic law, they said, the death sentence would apply only if the woman was married or if she was raped.

Neither the Iranian government nor justice officials have commented on the case, indicating that they might seek a resolution that would not harm relations with Germany. The case was first reported by German television.

In Germany, Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Erdmann said the verdict is not final. He said the German government considers the decision a violation of human rights.

The relationship was exposed when the woman was stopped at an airport in Tehran in September for a violation of the strict Islamic dress code for women, the sources said.

When asked what she was doing at the airport, she said she was waiting for her fiance. When Hofer arrived to catch a flight to Germany, he confirmed that he knew the woman but denied that they were engaged, the sources said.

Hofer was arrested when the woman said they had a sexual relationship, the sources said.

Iran’s ties with Germany suffered markedly after a German court last April implicated top Iranian leaders in the 1992 assassination of Kurdish Iranian dissidents in Berlin.