by Irene Soave
The trial for the murder of child bride Mona Heidari in February 2022 has now ended with a prison sentence. Quite different from the lightning processes that send dissidents to the gallows
Iran, which sends its youngsters, dissidents, to the gallows after less than a month’s trial, has different opinions about other offenders. Sajjad Heidarnava, a man who beheaded his wife in Ahvaz, southwestern Iran, and walked the street laughing with her head in his hands, will serve eight years in prison. His wife, Mona Heidari, was 17; They married when she was 12 and had a 3-year-old son.
The case shocked the country: the video surfaced on social media long after the February 2022 killing, sparking a wave of pain and outrage and a campaign by the main human rights organizations to raise the minimum age for marriage, now to 13 for girl set. Heidarnava acted in concert with Mona’s brother-in-law; Even if he was also guilty, the sentence was only seven and a half years for murder plus eight years for assault. Without appeal: The family of the child bride – and of the assassin’s accomplice Heidar Heidarnava, her brother – had forgiven the assassin, rather than asking for qesas, a more severe punishment under Islamic law. Kind of a bargain. Heidar Heidarnava, the accomplice, is jailed for 45 months. The process took place regularly and had a reasonable duration: eleven months.
The same cannot be said of the forced confessions and blitz processes that led to the hanging of four young people who were among the protesters involved in the protests that erupted following the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16. The 22-year-old Kurdish woman was arrested for allegedly violating the country’s dress code for women. died two days later from police beatings. Since then, the protests have not stopped: 19,000 arrests, almost 500 demonstrators lost their lives and, most importantly, four blitz executions that smacked of exemplary punishments. Twenty more have already been sentenced to death and could be hanged at any moment.
January 18, 2023 (change January 18, 2023 | 18:20)
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