in modern Iranian history, the authorities last Wednesday hanged a 40-year-old woman, Shahla Jahed, for the murder eight years ago of her lover’s wife.
The story was an O.J. Simpson-like drama that captivated the entire country for almost a decade. People were drawn to the story at first because the man in the case was one of the country’s most prominent soccer players in the 1980s and was coaching one of Iran’s premier teams when his wife was knifed to death. The nation remained drawn to the story because Shahla, as she was uniformly known to the public, was a dramatic, downright sassy performer in the courtroom. Third, there were serious questions about Shahla’s guilt and questions about the competence of the Judiciary that allowed for a long simmering public debate.
Shahla was convicted of stabbing Laleh Saharkhizan, who was married to Nasser Mohammad Khani, then the coach of Persepolis, one of the country’s best professional teams.
Shahla had entered a sigheh (temporary) marriage with the soccer player so they were not guilty of adultery. But testimony revealed that he consumed drugs with Shahla and he was sentenced to undergo 75 lashes for that crime.
As described in court testimony, Shahla became infatuated with Khani and pursued him until he gave in to her advances. He wed her in a sigheh arrangement without telling his wife and spent time with Shahla in a north Tehran apartment.
But the murdered woman’s mother and sister both testified that Khani’s wife suspected something was up because she received periodic anonymous phone calls from a woman who told her she did not deserve to live with Khani.
Shahla was hanged at dawn last Wednesday. The state news agency said the judicial officials spent almost an hour with the dead women’s family, trying to convince them to spare Shahla’s life in exchange for a payment of blood money, diyeh. They refused.
One news report said the victim’s son kicked a stool out from under Shahla’s feet and left her dangling to strangle to death in the Evin Prison execution chamber. Another report said it was the victim’s brother who kicked out the stool.
News reports said the soccer player attended the hanging along with many of his wife’s relatives.
Amnesty International (AI), which had campaigned for years to save Shahla’s life, condemned the execution. Malcolm Smart, AI’s director for the Middle East, said, “There were serious concerns over the fairness of the trial and the evidence used against the defendant.”
Shahla initially denied any involvement, then confessed, then repudiated the confession.
The Judiciary decided after two trials that in 2002 Shahla went to the house of Khani and Saharkhizan and stabbed Saharkhizan repeatedly. The body was found by her two children. Shahla and Khani were both arrested. Khani was released only after 11 months when Shahla confessed that she acted alone.
But she still minimized the killing, saying, “I am guilty of loving Nasser.” She blamed “Satan” for the killing.
At one point Shahla demanded that her case be heard in public in the 100,000-seat Azadi Stadium, where the Persepolis team plays. The mother of her victim shouted back that Shahla should hang in the stadium
In her first trial, which was held in public, Shahla was the star, at times responding brashly to the judge, then pouting, smirking and gesticulating.
She transfixed the nation. The press went wild, while the sober religious commentators on state television pronounced on the tragedy sanctimoniously.
Shahla, whose real name is Khadijeh Jahed, was convicted in her first 2004 trial, which featured tearful confessions, spirited denials, anguished pledges of eternal love, admissions of betrayal and pleas for mercy. One minute she was haranguing the judge, the next she appeared to be trying to flirt with him.
The Independent of London said the trial “veers between the public vulgarity of The Jerry Springer Show and high opera of Carmen.”
Khani sat a few seats from Shahla with his murdered wife’s mother, He came across as a weak but devoted husband. As he followed his mother-in-law to the podium to request a sentence of death, Shahla smiled and sarcastically applauded.
After a particularly bruising exchange, Shahla told the judge, “It looks like you’re sitting here with a sword as if we’re in a duel. Excuse me for my boldness because I like you. I confess I really do.” The judge stroked his chin with a bemused air of helplessness. She later told him: “In your sleep you don’t want to see Shahla’s wandering soul.”
Most of Shahla’s courtroom comments, however, were directed at her former lover, rather than the judge. “I’d get up in the middle of the night and miss Nasser,” she said, explaining why she recorded thousands of calls, many as late as 2 a.m. to Khani’s marital home. “Even if he went to the toilet I missed him.”
Their affair began in 1998, with Shahla a besotted fan and Khani the veteran star. “He was Mr. Goal,” said Shahla when she described how she fell in love. “He wasn’t very good looking, but he was attractive somehow.”
He soon set her up in a secret love nest and they contracted a sigheh marriage. Under Shia law, this allows a marriage with a time limit, sometimes as short as an hour or two. Critics—particularly Sunni Muslims, but including many Iranian Shias—condemn the institution as little more than legalized prostitution. Supporters say sigheh was set up as a safety valve recognizing human weakness within the confines of a strict religious society and making provision for children born out of marriage.
Shahla made home videos of the four-year affair. After Persepolis won the league championship in 2002, a beaming Khani is welcomed into their expensive apartment by Shahla. “What does it feel like to be a champion?” she asks him. “I’m so happy dear,” he replies.
When it was time for Shahla to give the judge her final statement of defense, she instead chose to read a poem to her lover, a few lines of sentimental doggerel about love, prison and death.
In interviews after the trial, Khani was dismissive of Shahla and tried to portray his wife in gracious terms. “You cannot compare my wife to Shahla,” he said. “My wife loved me with all her heart, but Shahla’s love was just lust.” He later said he and his wife had a “telepathic understanding.” But in a tape recording, the dead woman complains about how little she sees of him.
The details of the murder are sketchy. A police video shows Shahla reconstructing the crime, explaining where Laleh lay reading a newspaper in bed, and using a wooden spoon to demonstrate how she stabbed her.
Shahla said she was not tortured, but was put under pressure to confess. “Even roosters lay eggs under police interrogation,” she said in the colorful language that amused the public. But she refused to explain how she told police where to find a bloodstain that had previously eluded them.
After the first trial, another judge said he believed there were genuine doubts over the conviction, with new evidence pointing to a sexual assault. But he said this was not enough to override a confession, even though the confession had been repudiated by Shahla.
When the reconstruction and confession were shown in court, the victim’s mother, Sakineh Saharkhizan, collapsed in hysterics. “Oh God, God damn you!” she screamed, rocking back and forth. “May God’s rage fall upon you. She killed my girl.”
In the videotaped confession, Shahla cried and said: “Forgive me, forgive me. I brought water and washed her hands. She kept asking me for mercy.” On the final day of the trial, Shahla told another story, however. She said she had been lured to the house late at night and climbed the stairs to the bedroom. She said she saw Laleh’s clothes scattered everywhere and then saw the body. “I went there and saw the corpse,” she said, wailing with emotion and addressing herself to Khani. “I put a cover on it, I felt sick. My hands got bloody. I didn’t kill her, I swear I didn’t. What was my sin in loving you?”
Shahla was convicted by the court in June 2004. Her conviction and death sentence were confirmed by the Supreme Court in October 2005.
But in February 2008, Mahmud Hashemi-Shahrudi, then the chairman of the Judiciary, vacated the conviction and ordered the case sent to a new trial court and started all over again. Shahrudi said he found “procedural flaws” in the first case.
A new trial in February 2009, however, found Shahla guilty again.
At her first trial, Shahla told the judge, “If you want to kill me, go ahead.… If you send me back there [to Evin], I’ll confess again. And not only will I confess to killing her, but I’ll also confess that I killed those murdered by others.”
Karim Lahidji, the president of the Iranian League for Human Rights told The Guardian of London that Shahla was “a victim of a misogynous society.” He said, “Shahla Jahed has never had a fair trial in Iran and has always insisted she is innocent. Although Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani’s case is about adultery, her case is similar to that of Shahla Jahed, because both are victims of the flaws of the Iranian judicial system.”
