WARNING – DISTRESSING CONTENT: Sajjad Heydari dragged Mona Heydari, his wife and mother to his child, from a car outside her family home and killed the teenager
A mother and father have forgiven the vile thug who beheaded their 17-year-old daughter – his wife – in a shocking attack outside her home.
Sajjad Heydari only received an eight-year jail term for killing Mona Heydari because her parents “pardoned” him for the murder rather than seeking retribution, a court spokesperson said. Speaking in court, the dad, only named in reports as Javid, said: “The husband provided her with the very best of lives.
“It’s true, there was fighting between them, and sometimes there was violence, and she would return home, but she only stayed for two or three days, and then he would pick her up, and life would return to normal.
“These fights between husband and wife are completely normal, and I don’t think there was a problem as she did not ask for a divorce.”
Although Heydari paraded his wife’s head down the street after the killing, Mona’s parents declined to invoke Iran’s Islamic law of retribution and the punishment was reduced considerably this week.
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Mona, who was married off at the tender age of 12, initially escaped her abusive husband and fled Ahvaz, Iran, to Turkey with another man, the court heard. Heydari had reportedly denied Mona’s pleas for a divorce.
Javid eventually located her and persuaded her to return to Iran, reports the Express. According to the BBC, her father allegedly used Interpol to locate his daughter and brought her back to her violent husband, where her spouse – who is also her cousin – murdered her, claiming she had dishonoured him.
Heydari’s brother, Heydar, disposed of the decapitated body, and received a 45-month prison sentence for complicity in intentional homicide this week.
The court heard how the victim’s father defended marrying her off at 12 to a relative, arguing that the violence she endured in the relationship was normal. Mona was only 14 when she gave birth to their son.
“We got a certificate of confirmation that she was physically old enough to marry, and there was no physical problem in the relationship,” Javid told the court.
The family claimed the husband felt humiliated and insulted after his wife fled to Turkey with another man. The Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) reported the victim was forced to marry her cousin at the age of 12.
They also disclosed the young girl supposedly suffered domestic abuse and whenever she expressed a wish to divorce her husband, her family urged her to return home for the sake of their child, who was born when she was just 14.
The NCRI’s Women’s Committee stated: “Not a week goes by without some form of honour killing making headlines. The clerical regime’s failure to criminalise these murders has led to a catastrophic rise in honour killings.
“In a report published in 2019, the state-run Sharq daily newspaper wrote that an annual average of 375 to 450 honour killings are recorded in Iran. The murders are more prevalent [the areas of] in Khuzestan, Kurdistan, Ilam, and Sistan and Baluchestan. Some women’s rights activists believe that honour killings in Iran are officially justified as ‘family differences’.
“The catastrophic rise in honour killings in Iran is rooted in misogyny and the patriarchal culture institutionalised in the laws and society. Although the father, brother, or husband holds the knife, sickle, or rifle, the murders are rooted in the medieval outlook of the ruling regime. The clerical regime’s laws officially denote that women are second-degree citizens owned by men.”