What is lapidation?

Stoning, or lapidation, is a method of capital punishment whereby a group throws stones at a person until the subject dies. No individual among the group can be identified as the one who kills the subject. This is in contrast to the case of a judicial executioner. Often slower than other forms of execution, stoning within the context of contemporary Western culture is considered a form of execution by torture.

In some countries, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, stoning has been declared illegal by the state, but is practiced extrajudicially. In several others, people have been sentenced to death by stoning, but the sentence has not been carried out. In modern times, allegations of stoning are politically sensitive; the government of Iran, for example, describes allegations of stoning as political propaganda.