An Iranian man was sentenced to nine years in prison for beheading his 14-year-old daughter in her sleep. The mother of the teenager, frightened by the lightness of the sentence, demands the execution of her husband.
The murder in May of Romina Ashrafi, both infanticide and “honor killing”, had provoked an outcry in Iran: on social networks and in reformist media, the “institutional violence” of a patriarchal system had been designated guilty.
The girl wanted to marry her boyfriend, 35 years old. His father had refused the marriage proposal, not for the age of the suitor, but because he was Sunni, while the Ashrafi family is Shiite. Romina had run away. Police found her after several days and, although the teenager told a judge worrying about her life, she was returned to her father.
"I want my husband never to come back again"
Asleep in her room, Romina was beheaded the next day, May 21, in her sleep, by her father armed with a sickle. The latter thus claimed to wash away the tainted honor of the family in the eyes of the inhabitants of the village of Sefidsangan, in the province of Guilan, in the north of the country.
"The court ruling terrified my family and me," the teenager's mother, Rana Dachti, told Ilna News Agency. "I want my husband never to come back to our village again," she added, asking that the judgment be reviewed and her husband executed.
Rana, who has been living with her husband for fifteen years, fears for her last child, a son. In Iran, the Islamic penal code stipulates that the child belongs to its father. In the case of infanticide, the fathers therefore only incur three to nine years' imprisonment and fines. On the other hand, murder is punishable by capital punishment.
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Romina's fiancé, Bahman Kharavi, who was prosecuted for kidnapping, was sentenced to two years in prison, according to Rana Dachti.
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