TEHRAN, August 6, 2008 (AFP) - Iran's judiciary has decided to scrap the punishment of stoning convicts to death in a bill submitted to parliament for approval, the local press reported on Wednesday.

Judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi was also quoted as saying that the stoning sentence against several convicts had been suspended and commuted to either lashes of the whip or jail terms.

An Iranian rights group in July voiced concern at the fate of eight women and one man sentenced to death by stoning for adultery and urged the Islamic republic to halt their executions.

It was not known if they were among those whose lives have been spared.

Under Iran's Islamic law, adultery has been still theoretically punishable by stoning, which involves the public hurling stones at the convict buried up to his waist. A woman is buried up to her shoulders.

A 2002 directive by judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi imposed a moratorium on such executions.

However, in July 2007 the Islamic republic drew international outrage by stoning to death a man convicted of adultery, Jafar Kiani, in a village in the northwest of the country.