Honor Killing in Gisaavandan, Rasht; Man Kills His Wife with a Machete

A 40-year-old woman was killed by her husband with a machete in the village of Gisaavandan, Sangar district of Rasht, motivated by 'honor'. During this incident, the victim's sister was also injured. The suspect was arrested and transferred to Lakan prison in Rasht. According to the Hirakani human rights website, on Friday, June 21, an individual named Ahmad Fard killed his wife, Narges Mousavi, with machete strikes to the heart, kidney, and neck. The victim's sister, who was present during the altercation, was attacked by this man and had four fingers severed by machete strikes. Narges, a mother of two children aged eight and fifteen who suffers from Parkinson's disease, married Ahmad after the death of her first husband to 'cover the medical expenses of her children'. However, due to domestic violence by her husband, she had filed for divorce. According to the report, the statistics of women's murders in the Gilan and Mazandaran provinces are rising due to the lack of legal support for female heads of households and women experiencing domestic violence, as well as women's restricted access to divorce rights due to strict laws and the presence of religious and patriarchal biases. Women's rights activists say that the lack of judicial rigor against perpetrators of femicide has led to an increase in these cases. In the past year, there have been many instances where a father or brother of a young woman has killed a young man under the pretext of not adhering to hijab or having relationships with another man, with the perpetrator facing minimal punishment. Some academic articles and theses have reported annual statistics of between 375 to 450 cases of femicide in Iran, referred to in official government literature as 'honor killings'. According to the laws of the Islamic Republic, if the father of the victim is the perpetrator, he is effectively immune due to the right of blood and what is referred to in Islamic law as 'vali dam'. In cases of spousal murder or femicide, Islamic penal laws have left loopholes that allow the perpetrator to claim immunity under pretexts such as 'honor' or suspicion of 'illicit relationships'. According to the Islamic Penal Code in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the punishment for 'murder' is 'qisas' (retribution), but according to Article 630 of the Islamic Penal Code, 'if a man sees his wife committing adultery with a foreign man and knows of the woman's compliance, he may kill them both at that moment, and if the woman is coerced, he may only kill the man.'