18-year-old Iranian woman burned to death by brother for marrying older man: Reports

An 18-year-old Iranian young woman has died of critical burns after her brother torched their house for marrying a man he did not approve of, state media reported on Wednesday.

The victim had been hospitalised for a week and died from severe burn injuries on Tuesday, according to local media. The incident occurred in the city of Rasht in Iran’s Gilan province.

The victim’s brother was against her marriage, and when he failed to prevent the marriage, he set fire to the house where the victim and her husband were at the time, the official IRNA news agency cited a local police official as saying.

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The perpetrator has been arrested and handed over to the judicial authorities, Colonel Majid Rasoulzadeh-Farsad said.

“The defendant stated in his statement that his motive for the crime was his opposition to his sister’s marriage and the 12-year age difference between her and her husband,” he said.

Both the girl and her husband had suffered burns and were taken to the hospital. There are no details on the husband’s condition.

This comes as the news of the beheading of a 13-year-old girl by her father in a so-called “honor killing” in the same province shook Iran on Tuesday and stoked a nationwide outcry.

The exact figures for honor killings in Iran are unknown. In 2014, Hadi Mostafaei, a senior police official at the time, said that honor killings made up 20 percent of the murder cases in the country.

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