Horror in Iran where a couple was arrested for killing and dismembering the body of their son, the film director Babak Khorramdin, and then confessed to having killed his son-in-law and daughter years earlier. The country is in shock and the confession has raised the debate, at least on social media, on a legal system that is very lenient with parents who kill their children: murder is in fact considered an “honor killing”, because the director the parents contested that he was still celibate. The two therefore risk a maximum of 10 years in prison even if the couple will also be tried for the murder of their son-in-law, which could guarantee them the death penalty.
And now many are also wondering how it was possible that no one had previously reported the disappearance of the other two people. The murder was discovered in the early hours of Sunday, when in a suburb of Tehran, Ekbatan, someone glimpsed the human remains inside a garbage can. Thanks to the fingerprints of the hands – said Mohammad Shahriari, head of the criminal court of Tehran – the victim was traced and the agents went to the home of Khorramdin, Iran (71 years) and Abkar (81): the two confessed to having first annihilated his son with a sleeping pill and then suffocated and stabbed him. Then, under interrogation, the two confessed to the other crimes and it was understood that they always used the same technique: first they put them to sleep by mixing the sleeping pill in food and then, once killed, they dismembered the bodies they discarded. The killing of his daughter three years ago, and that of his son-in-law a few years earlier: Arezoo because he took drugs and because, having become a widow, she received other men at home, Faramarz because he had shady contacts and was a violent man.
Graduated in film from Tehran University in 2009, Babak Khorramdin had lived for a long time in London before returning to Iran to devote himself to teaching. “My son was single. It made life impossible for us. We weren’t calm even one day. He cursed and did what he wanted. His mother and I have decided. ‘ To the director son, the couple did not forgive the excessively libertine behavior and the fact that he received his students at home. The crisis with the 47-year-old, who perhaps had also guessed something of the two previous murders, broke out during Covid: he was a university professor and began to take lessons online, but he took the students home. As on the previous two occasions, the two first anesthetized him with the sleeping pill cooked in the chicken, then killed him by mutilating his body. “I have no remorse,” the father would have said. Investigators said they believe the couple to be sane but will continue the investigation. Iran is not new to such heinous murders: in the last year, a child has been beheaded by his father and a 20-year-old gay man killed by his brother; both cases were declassified as honor killings.