August 9, 2019
Former Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Ali has been found guilty and sentenced to hang for murdering his wife.
Judiciary spokesman Gholam-Hossain Esmaili said July 30 that Najafi was convicted of “premeditated murder,” although the former mayor had insisted he did not take a handgun to his wife’s apartment with the intent of killing her, but only planning to frighten her.
The court clearly did not accept his explanation.
A prominent Reformist politician who held major government posts under Presidents Rafsanjani, Khatami and Rohani, Najafi is a member of the Servants of Construction Party, which was founded in the 1990s to support the policies of then-President Rafsanjani and is now viewed as the most moderate wing of the Reformist movement.
Najafi was found guilty of shooting dead his second wife, Mitra Ostad, at her apartment in the capital May 28.
According to Iranian media reports, her body was found in a bathtub after Najafi, 67, turned himself in and confessed to killing her. She had been shot twice, once in the chest and once in the arm. Other bullets were found in the walls.
“The charge sheet included premeditated murder, battery and possession of an illegal firearm,” Esmaili said, quoted by the Judiciary’s official Mizan news agency.
“The court has established premeditated murder and passed the execution sentence,” he said.
Najafi was acquitted of the battery charge, but received a two-year jail sentence for possessing an illegal firearm, the spokesman said.
Najafi’s lawyer said he would appeal the sentence.
Ostad’s family, as is its right, had demanded that the Islamic law of qasas (retribution) to be applied—the “eye-for-an-eye” philosophy of punishment that would see the death penalty carried out in this instance.
Najafi’s trial received detailed coverage in state media where scandals related to politicians rarely appear on television.
A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in mathematics, Najafi was elected Tehran’s mayor in August 2017, but resigned the following April after facing criticism from conservatives for attending a dance performed by schoolgirls. He said he was resigning for health reasons.
Najafi married Ostad without divorcing his first wife, unusual in the upper crust of Iranian society where polygamy is legal but socially frowned upon.
Some of Iran’s ultra-conservatives said the case showed the “moral bankruptcy” of Reformists, while Reformists accused the conservative-dominated state television of bias in its coverage and highlighting the case for political ends.
At the same time as the announcement on Najafi, the spokesman said Mohammad-Hadi Razavi, son-in-law of Labor Minister Mohammad Shariatmadari, had been found guilty by one of the new corruption courts of embezzling 2.11 trillion rials ($18 million) from banks. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and 74 lashes.