Iran, Murder of Honor: Iran's News Agency (IRNA) called the alleged murder a "murder of honor." A video circulating online shows a man named Sajjad Heydari walking smiling down the local streets, holding a knife in one hand and his wife's head in the other. An Iranian man, Sajjad Heydari, strolls through the streets of the city of Ahvaz in the southwestern province of Khuzestan on Feb. 5, 2022, smiling with a blood-stained knife in one hand and the head of his 17-year-old wife, Mona Heydari, in the other. Mona, a cousin of Sajjad, was forced to marry the latter at the age of 12, and the minimum age for marriage in Iran is 13 for girls and 15 for boys.
Mona was reported to have suffered domestic violence and wanted to divorce her cousin, but had not been successful, so she looked for an opportunity to go to Turkey. After fleeing to Turkey for 4 months, she was persuaded by her father to return to Iran.
In the end, Sajjad, feeling insulted and discredited, decides to carry out an honor murder, leaving the brothers to control Mona's hands and feet and behead her, thus taking the scene last Saturday.
Local prosecutor Abbas Hosseini Pouya revealed that Heidari and his brother have been arrested after the incident, and his brother is accused of helping him commit crimes. Puja said the defendants would certainly be dealt with harshly and those who posted and shared the videos could also face arrest.
As soon as the news was exposed, it caused an uproar in Iran and abroad, and it was not known whether Mona's death would promote Iran's progress and make the tragedy not repeat itself.
Ensieh Khazali, vice chairman of Iran's Ministry of Women and Family Affairs, said: "The judiciary is determined to impose the harshest punishment [on the perpetrator and an accomplice suspect] in accordance with the law."
The so-called "honor murder" refers to the extreme "punishment" of other members of the family who affect the reputation of the family. The victims of this cruel "family law" are mostly directed at women, and are often used to punish the so-called adulterous acts, the resistance to arranged marriages, and sometimes even the victims of sexual assault and rape are regarded as "family shame" and suffer bad luck.
