Iranian police have announced that they have arrested an Iranian man wanted in Germany for mutilating an Iranian woman in a bloody knife attack.
Iran has not said whether it will extradite the man to Germany. If it does so, it would be a first. The Islamic Republic does not extradite Iranian nationals as a rule.
German police said the wanted man, Abdollah Ramazani, 45, carried a Dutch passport but lived in a Berlin.
He had a website in which he offered to help Iranians having problems with German immigration.
A 36-year-old Iranian woman contacted him for help. She was identified only as Banafsheh D. It is the German practice not to give the last names of victims.
On October 30, pedestrians on a Berlin street heard a woman screaming out a window for help. Ramazani had tied her up and attacked her with a knife, slashing her breasts and private parts and leaving her a bloody mess.
Martin Steltner, the spokesman for the Berlin prosecutor, said, “She had managed to drag herself to the window and was calling for help despite being tied to a chair, gagged and having suffered terrible, mutilating injuries.”
Her 10-year-old daughter had also been tied to a chair and gagged, but was not otherwise physically harmed.
The prosecutor’s spokesman said, “It would seem we are dealing with a crime of jealousy. It’s horrific.”
Ramazani fled Berlin and apparently drove back to his home in Urumiyeh. The German police notified the Iranian police. They checked his home in Urumiyeh. But he had then fled to Tehran, where they found him Friday night.
Banafsheh was taken to a hospital and is recovering. The daughter suffered shock and was put in the care of authorities while they summoned the woman’s husband, an Iranian who lives elsewhere in Germany. Banafsheh and her daughter had only recently moved into an apartment in the building where she was attacked after separating from her husband.
