Indictment issued for Mona Heydari murder suspects
The Ahvaz Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor announced the issuance of an indictment for the "factors" in the murder of Mona (Ghazal) Heidari, a young woman whose husband beheaded her.
Sadeq Jafari Chegni said that due to the private complaint filed by the "Awliya Dam" against the defendants and the "demand for retribution and other criminal actions of the defendants in disrupting public order and hurting people's feelings," the defendants have been "demanded for the most severe punishment."
In February of last year, the Rokna news agency published a picture of a young man in Ahvaz who beheaded his 17-year-old wife in a "honor" killing and then paraded her around the street while smiling.
After the Ruqna news website was shut down for publishing these images, a number of religious officials in the Islamic Republic criticized the media for republishing this news and defended what they called the "zeal of the Iranian man."
The shocking images of the murder of a teenage woman from Ahwazi shocked the public. The mother of the accused in the murder claimed that her daughter-in-law met a Syrian man online and that is why she went to Turkey, and was eventually murdered by her husband, Sajjad, after returning to Iran.
The brutal murder of this young Ahwazi woman by her husband, with the complicity of her brother-in-law, who were her cousins, drew widespread criticism from the government, which is preventing the passage of preventive laws as well as the bill "Protecting the Dignity and Protecting Women from Violence."
The bill has been in the works for nearly 10 years, but has not yet been passed due to opposition from a number of clerics, and its fate is in limbo. Iran is one of four countries that has not joined the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
In recent years, femicide in Iran has increased, including the beheading of Romina Ashrafi, a 13-year-old girl from Taleshi, by her father; the murder of Reyhaneh Ameri, a 22-year-old girl from Kermani, by her father with an "iron rod," the killing of Fatemeh Farhi in Abadan by her husband, who was also her cousin; the killing of Shakiba Bakhtiar, a 16-year-old girl from Kermanshahi, by her father's knife; and the beating of two teenage girls from Sistan and Baluchestan by their families.
Source: Radio Farda
