on the head with a block of wood; he says he thought she was the Iranian “secret police” coming to get him.
The case against Ravan-bakhsh Kakavand, 45, began November 23 in the South Australian State Supreme Court. Kakavand, who pleaded not guilty to aggravated assault, claims he was mentally impaired at the time of the incident, and that he had a flashback to his time in Iran when he was arrested and tortured as a political prisoner in 1993.
The court heard that the defendant had spent six years in an Iranian prison awaiting execution. After three unsuccessful attempts, Kakavand escaped to Australia. According to Kaka-vand, who says he has no recollection of beating his wife, he believed he was beating the Iranian secret police before he woke up in a jail cell. When he realized he was in a police station charged with assault against his wife, Kakavand said he “couldn’t believe it.”
“I wanted to kill them,” he said, referring to the secret police with whom he thought he was fighting. “I thought the secret police had come. I hit them, I hit them… I never hit her. I told them she’s not involved with the politics…. She hasn’t done anything wrong.”
But according to Prosecutor Brian Nitschke, witnesses allegedly saw Kakavand sitting on his wife, using a block of wood to deliver “full-force blows” on the side of a road outside Adelaide Hills last December. Nitschke said Kakavand only stopped after witnesses, who had yelled at him, finally tackled him, pinning him to the ground before police arrived.
“[One witness] saw a man standing with both arms raised over his head holding a block of wood about three feet long, holding it in a striking fashion,” Nitschke related. “He sees the male strike the female with the block of wood at her head.”
Some witnesses testified that Kakavand and his wife had had a dispute that day, reportedly because he had refused to sign papers sponsoring her sister to come to Australia.
But the defense argued that Kakavand, who came to Australia as a political refugee, was a victim of post traumatic atress disorder (PTSD) after having been tortured in Iran.
According to psychiatrist Chris Branson, Kakavand was seriously depressed at the time of the crime because of financial stress and the difficulty he was having finding steady work. Branson testified that the flashbacks and the attack stemmed from severe depression.
“Had you asked him at the time, he wouldn’t have known where he was or what he was doing,” Branson said.
Kakavand’s wife’s side of the story has not yet been heard. She was taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital with a fractured skull and other non life-threatening injuries.
Justice Patricia Kelly is now considering whether or not Kakavand was mentally impaired at the time of the incident. The trial is continuing.