By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 8 hours ago, updated 6 hours ago
The video of the man smiling and marching with his victim’s head in the street caused shock and outrage in Iran. poco_bw/stock.adobe.com
An Iranian man has been sentenced to more than eight years in prison after beheading his wife and showing her head publicly in 2022, sending shockwaves through the country, the judiciary said on Wednesday (January 18).
Mona Heidari, 17, suspected of adultery, was murdered in February 2022 by her husband and brother-in-law in Ahvaz, the capital of Khuzestan province in the south-west of the country. The video of the man smiling and marching with his victim’s head in the street caused shock and outrage in Iran.
The accused has no right to appeal the verdict
On Wednesday, the spokesman for the judiciary, Massoud Setayechi, told the press that the victim’s parents “pardoned the murderer Sajjad Heidarnava”. “Indeed, the man was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for the premeditated murder of a Muslim woman and eight months for assault,” the official said.
“The defendant has no right to appeal the verdict and the decision is final,” added Massoud Setayechi. “The second defendant in the case, Heidar Heidarnava, was sentenced to 45 months in prison for being an accessory to first degree murder,” the spokesman said.
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At the time, local media reported that the victim was only 12 when she married and was a mother to a 3-year-old son when she died. After the tragedy, several human rights defenders called on the authorities to reform the law protecting women from domestic violence and to raise the minimum age for girls to marry, which is currently set at 13.
Iran has been rocked by protests that erupted following the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, following her arrest for allegedly violating the country’s women’s dress code.
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