Eleven Days in Detention for Journalist Who Reported the Murder of a ‘Child Bride’

A local journalist in Lorestan Province says he was detained for 11 days after publishing a report about the murder of a young bride by her turbaned husband.

Sina Qalandari, a local journalist in Kuhdasht and Romeshkan, told one of Iran’s media outlets about his detention of at least eleven days in Khorramabad Central Prison following his reporting on the murder of Mabina Suri, a teenage girl from Suri District in Lorestan Province, allegedly at the hands of some family members.

Sina Qalandari said on Monday, September 29, in an interview with Hamdelí newspaper that he was detained by order of the regional prosecutor and upon the complaint of Mabina Suri’s family and the defendants in the case.

The journalist explained his detention by saying that after a news agency published “false and inaccurate” reports about the murder of this teenage girl, he published the correct account, and was subsequently detained.

Mr. Qalandari stated that despite his poor physical condition at the time of detention, he was not provided with necessary medications, and despite pain and bleeding, was not transferred to a hospital.

This local journalist, emphasizing that he spent at least eleven days in detention without being informed of charges against him, reported that he went on a three-day hunger strike in protest of the detention conditions. He considers the apparent reason for his detention to be “telling the truth about the dimensions of this matter” and says: “Local journalists have been dealt with many times for exposing issues like this, but their voices were not broadcast anywhere and perhaps for this reason they were treated unjustly.”

Earlier, Voice of America reported, citing Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB, that in mid-September, following the discovery of the body of a “young bride” named Mabina Suri, her husband, who was a clergyman, was arrested as a suspect.

News agency “Rokna” also reported, citing the commander of police in Lorestan, that the reason for this murder, which occurred on September 8, was family disputes with a so-called honor motive by one of the family members.

Last year, a 14-year-old girl named Romina Ashrafy was also murdered by her father in one of the villages of Talesh in Gilan, and the court sentenced her father to only 9 years in prison.

Following Romina Ashrafy’s murder, the bill “Protection of Children and Adolescents,” after 11 years of waiting, was finally approved by the Guardian Council on June 18, 2020. One of the features of this bill is the “criminalization” of any direct or indirect action that leads to harm to children.

Although the eleven-year limbo of this bill is not the only indication of the lack of protective laws for women and children in Iran. According to the laws of punishment in the Islamic Republic, if a father murders his own child, he is not subject to retaliation; rather, the general aspect of the crime, which is 3 to 10 years of discretionary imprisonment, is enforced.

Source: Voice of America