NCRI – The discovery of bodies of three young women in Tehran brought to six the total number of women who have been murdered in the capital last week, according to state-run media. The unidentified victims, between the ages of 20 and 30, had been brutally murdered and their bodies dumped in remote outskirts of Tehran.
Mrs. Sarvnaz Chitsaz, Chair of NCRI’s Women’s Committee, said, “The alarming increase of such horrific crimes in Tehran and other cities of Iran is, before anything else, the result of misogynous actions, policies, and laws of the mullahs’ regime, which have set the stage for serial murders of Iranian women and girls. The killers believe they can act with impunity."
During Kerman (central Iran) serial murders, in which pro-regime Hezbollah thugs brutally murdered five young men and women, the mullahs’ regime Supreme Court acquitted the murderers of all charges on the grounds that, “the defendants were pious individuals and that their determination that the victims should have been killed was not wrong.”
According to the "Islamic Punishment Act", if the courts establish that killing a person was in the framework of retribution or based on the belief that the victims deserved to die, the murderer cannot be punished and would not have to pay Diyeh (blood money). If the courts determine that the victims should not have been killed, the murder would be considered as an error and manslaughter and the murder should only pay blood money."
After the serial murders in Mashad (northeast Iran) in 2001 where 13 women were killed, the murderer claimed that he had acted on religious grounds and in order to cleanse society from filth. Judiciary’s spokesman also announced last week, “No court order was needed to confront mal-veiling.”
Underscoring that suppression of and discrimination against women forms the basis for the ideology, laws, and actions of mullahs’ medieval regime, Mrs. Chitsaz said, “While the serial killers of women and teenagers are acquitted, a number of women face execution for defending themselves against rape.” Mrs. Chitsaz condemned these anti-human crimes against women and urged all activists and organizations advocating women’s and human rights to also condemn these atrocities.
Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
April 21, 2006