The man who beheaded his 17-year-old wife Mona Heidari and displayed her head in the street in February last year was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for murder and an additional eight months for assault. Iranian judiciary spokesman Massoud Setayeshi made this public, stating that the leniency in the sentence handed down to Sajjad Heydari was due to the victim’s family “pardoning” him for the so-called “honor killing”. According to her husband, Mona’s “fault” was not accepting the family-arranged marriage she had when she was just 12 years old. Two years later, when she was 14, she gave birth to her son.
Rokna news agency reported that the woman’s murder took place in Ahvaz, the capital of Iran’s Khuzestan province, where she had been forced by her family to return with guarantees of safety. The girl had previously fled to Turkey to escape the domestic violence she suffered from her husband for filing for divorce. Mona’s brother-in-law was sentenced to 45 months in prison for being an accessory to murder.
Human rights activists have condemned the tragedy and are calling for improved laws to protect women and an increase in the minimum age for marriage, which is currently 13 in Iran.