On Wednesday, Iran’s judiciary announced a nearly eight-year prison sentence for a cleric who beheaded his wife and carried him outside in front of passers-by for a crime that shocked the public last year. Ahvaz, the capital of Khuzestan province in the southwest of the country, February 2022. Iranian media then reported that the man killed his wife as an honor killing, carried her severed head and walked down the street with her with a wide smile, according to a video circulated on social media. .
Judiciary spokesman Masood Staishi said the victim’s family “forgave Sajjad Haidarno’s killer” instead of demanding his punishment. He added at a press conference that in respect of public law, “a man was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for the premeditated murder of a Muslim woman and eight months for assault.”
Stakhiy stressed that the verdict is “final and the accused has no right to appeal.” In the same case, the spokesman cited a 45-month prison sentence for the killer’s brother, Haider Haidarno, for “complicity in premeditated murder.”
In the aftermath of the crime, many Iranians called on the authorities to reform the law protecting women from domestic violence and raise the minimum marriage age for girls, which is currently set at 13. According to local media, Heidari was only 12 years old when she got married and they have a three-year-old child.
The verdict in the case came after protests erupted in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16, days after she was arrested by the vice police in Tehran on the basis of not following the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code.
