October-18-2013
An Iranian husband has been hospitalized in Scotland after severely injuring himself in an apparent effort—which was successful—to murder his estranged wife by incinerating her.
Ahmed Yazdanparast, 61, is being treated for the inhalation of super-heated fumes and smoke.
His wife, Ahdieh, 46, died Saturday morning after she was torched in her hairdressing salon. It is in a basement beneath her husband’s takeout shop in Stirling, Scotland, about halfway between Edinburgh and Glas-gow.
Yazdanparast apparently wrote a rambling, poster-sized suicide note ranting about his estranged wife before heading downstairs, attacking her, burning her to death and critically injuring himself in the process.
Police officers are waiting to quiz him if he regains consciousness.
A police source told the Scottish Express: “It’s not the fire which has done the damage [to the husband] but the inhalation of smoke and super-heated air and fumes. These are what normally kill people who survive the actual fire they are involved in.”
Witnesses found a giant note stating: “She married me for visa and my money. She brainwashed my daughter with my money. Four years of suffering, strain, confusion, pressure not seeing my children. Enough is enough.”
Police have confirmed that they are not looking for anyone else in connection with Ahdieh’s death.
Earlier this year, the Court of Session was told Yazdan-parast’s behavior when his wife sought a divorce was ”bizarre.” A judge ordered him not to approach his wife or their Stirling home and banned him from “crying, sobbing, wailing, howling, shouting or otherwise issuing forth exclamations of distress, threatening to commit suicide or taking any steps showing or tending to show that he has attempted to do so.”
A final hearing on the divorce suit had been scheduled for Stirling Sheriff Court two days after the wife was killed.
Ookayil Suneer, 33, a Turkish-born man who operates a kabob shop next door to the two Yazdanparasts’ businesses, told the Scottish Daily Record he had just opened his shop at Saturday lunchtime when he heard “two screams, coming from the salon,” then silence.
Seconds later, he saw Ahmed coming up the stairs from the basement salon.
Ookayil recalled: “He slumped on his knees and looked at me, but he did not say anything. His face and hair was burned and he was holding his jacket over his belly as if he had been trying to put out a fire on his stomach.”
Ookayil dialed 999—the British emergency number—then raced down to the salon. But by then, he said, “the smoke was so thick and black I could not get in.”
He added: “There was no noise inside at this stage.”
The couple separated in October 2010 but Ahmed had fought his wife’s attempts to get a divorce for three years. The case went to court, and Ahmed was found in contempt at a hearing in April after sobbing and wailing, banging his head on a table and ranting angrily at a sheriff.
Ookayil had known Ahdieh and Ahmed for nine years but did not want to talk about their problems.
Ookayil added: “Chico [the husband’s nickname] was very friendly. He would talk to anyone.”
But a local member of the Iranian community told the Scottish Daily Record: “Ahmed was a f****** idiot. I told Ahdieh she should have moved to Canada to live with her sister, or to her cousin in England. This should never have happened.”
