Ravanbakhsh Kakavand, 45, bashed his wife, Elnaz Adalat, with a 3-foot lump of wood on the side of a road near Adelaide December 1, 2009.
Adalat was hospitalized for 10 days with a fractured skull, as well as assorted cuts and bruises all over her body.
Ben Sale, Kakavand’s attorney, asked the Supreme Court of the state of South Australia to suspend any prison sentence that may be given to him and instead release Kakavand on a good-behavior bond. Kakavand is expected to be sentenced in days.
Sale said his client suffers post-traumatic stress disorder from his treatment in Iranian prisons and would not get the psychological support he needed if he ere jailed.
“Prison may bring up a lot of symptoms that had begun to abate,” Sale argued. He said Kakavand regularly visited a psychologist and his wife was now a “quasi carer” for Kakavand and “knows what to look out for.”
“That support will not be available to him in any way were he to be in prison.”
The court previously heard Kakavand was tortured as a political prisoner in Iran in 1993 and, when her bashed wife, thought she was the Iranian “secret police.”
Sale said Kakavand had a “diminished responsibility” for the bashing because the “secret police” had caused his post-traumatic stress disorder. “It is difficult to see how his condition that was given to him by essentially the secret police who imprisoned him and tortured him did not play a significant role in his offending. In his own mind he wasn’t hitting her at all, in fact in his own mind he was attempting to defend her,” Sale told the court.
Prosecutors, on the other hand, told the court the matter was “far too serious” for a prison sentence to be suspended.
Kakavand was found guilty in January of aggravated assault and causing serious harm with intent.
Justice Trish Kelly, who presided over the trial without a jury, ruled Kakavand had argued with his wife the morning before the beating over his refusal to sign immigrant sponsorship papers for her sister.
Justice Kelly said Kakavand attempted to “distance himself from any disagreement” in subsequent interviews with psychiatrists and in court.
She found any dissociative state of Kakavand’s “did not commence until after the accused had commenced the assault upon his wife.”
“I am satisfied that at the time when the accused commenced the assault upon his wife outside the car, his actions were deliberate and purposeful. The accused, already in a fragile psychological state that morning, simply lost his temper and his self-control as a result of the disagreement in the car with his wife.”
She said in that state Kakavand “intentionally” set about beating his wife, finding him mentally competent at the time of the offence.
Three men saw the bashing and went to the woman’s aid, restraining Kakavand from continuing the attack. One of the men described Kakavand as in a rage with “tunnel vision on killing whoever was on the ground,” while another said Kakavand was striking his wife “much faster than a person would chop wood.”
Kakavand’s wife did not give evidence at the trial. After the trial, the pair embraced outside court. As part of his bail conditions, Kakavand has been prevented from living with his wife while awaiting sentencing.
