The Tehran Supreme Court rejected the flogging and exile verdict for Salman Khodadadi, accused of raping a young woman, Zahra Navidpour.
Following a suit filed by Zahra Navidpour, Tehran Province’s Criminal Court convicted Salman Khodadadi of adultery “without use of violence” and sentenced him to 99 lashes in addition to two years of internal exile and deprivation of holding elected or appointed positions. Khodadadi objected the verdict and his case was undertaken by one of the branches of the Tehran Supreme Court.
While rejecting the charge of “rape,” the Supreme Court branch accepted the convict’s objection and did not uphold the preliminary ruling because Khodadadi suffers from diabetes and injects insulin. The case was turned back to the Criminal Court of Tehran to be re-examined. (The state-run Fararu website – October 15, 2019)
Zahra Navidpour, 28, from the small city of Malekan in East Azerbaijan Province, was looking for a job after her father’s death, when she was offered a job in Tehran by Salman Khodadadi, the so-called deputy of Malekan in the mullahs’ parliament.
Zahra was locked up, harassed and subsequently raped by Khodadadi at his office in Tehran. Then, she was threatened and warned against telling anybody about the incident.
Zahra filed a suit against Khodadadi. She held audio recordings and other incriminating documents at hand, but due to the deputy’s collusions with the court, she faced an unfair trial and a presiding judge who was intent to incriminate her.
In a verbal encounter in the parliament building, Khodadadi had threatened to kill Zahra and her family “overnight without anyone knowing.” In a letter to the judge presiding her case, she wrote that she had no security and that she needed to be protected.
Finally, Zahra Navidpour was found dead at her mother’s home on January 6, 2019. It seemed that she had committed suicide. The coroner’s office was supposed to perform autopsy on Zahra Navidpour’s body to determine the reason for her suspicious death, but security forces stole and secretly buried her body in a village before autopsy.
