February 17, 2023
An Iranian man has been sentenced to 7-1/2 years for decapitating his wife and displaying her head in public in a case that shocked the country, the Judiciary announced.
He was not sentenced to hang, although that is the usual sentence for murder in the Islamic Republic. However, “honor killings” are punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years. The family of the dead woman had pardoned the killer rather than demanding qesas Iran’s Islamic law of retribution which probably accounted for the relatively mild sentence.
Mona Heidari, 17, was killed last February by her husband and brother-in-law in Ahvaz. Video showed her smiling husband parading her decapitated head in the street. That sparked an outpouring of outrage.
The husband, Sajjad Heidarnava, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for murder and eight months for assault, Judiciary spokesman Masud Setayeshi told reporters January 17. Under Iranian law, he will be required to serve the longer of the two sentences.
“The second defendant in the case, Heidar Heidarnava, was sentenced to 45 months in prison for complicity in intentional homicide,” he added.
At the time of the murder, media outlets in Iran said Heidari had been married at the age of 12 and was the mother of a three-year-old son when she was killed.
She had run away from home, allegedly because of harsh treatment by her husband, and gone to Turkiye. But shortly before her murder, she was convinced by her father to return, according to the girl’s mother-in-law.
After the crime, human rights defenders called for changes to the law to protect women against domestic violence and to increase the minimum age of marriage for girls, currently set at 13, although judges have the authority to authorize marriage down to the age of nine for girls.
