“Stoning is not enforced in Iran” – we have heard the country’s officials say time and again. Last spring, two cases of stoning took place in the religious city of Mashhad in northeast Iran. Currently, several individuals are behind bars awaiting the enforcement of their stoning sentences. Kobra Najjar is one of them.
The judiciary has rejected Kobra’s third appeal. We have spoken to Kobra’s oldest child, her daughter Hiro, about what has happened to her mother and family.
Rooz (R): Should I ask anything, or you are going to explain yourself?
Hiro Najjar (HN): There is nothing to explain! From childhood I remember a father who was addicted to drugs. There are four of us: two boys and two girls.
(R): What about your mother?
(HN): We didn’t understanding much from the relationship between our parents when we were young. My father always brought strangers to our house and said that they were his friends. When I got older my mother told me that my father forced her to sell her body.
(R): Was Habib [your father’s murderer] one of those men?
(HN): Yes, my father brought him home. In the beginning he seemed like all the other men, but when he heard my mother’s story and saw what was happening to her he promised to save her from that terrible situation. I think it was mostly out of kindness.
(R): Did your father know that you knew about your mother’s situation?
(HN): No! He didn’t want any of us to know. With all of the problems and defects that he had, it was still important for him to keep us in the dark. He was very mean to us. He used to beat us and that was a tool to keep my mother in check.
(R): Why didn’t your mother separate from your father?
(HN): She did. We always asked her to leave our father. But [when she did], us kids were separated. I was staying with my father and my mother was worried that what happened to her would one day happen to me. That’s why she returned to her house. She was afraid for my future, because strangers were always welcome in our house.
(R): Would you tell us about the day your father was murdered?
(HN): Those days I tried to stay away from home. I was at a friend’s house where we had a poetry night. When I returned, my mother came to me and said, “we have decided to finish the job.”
(R): Were you sad?
(HN): No! I understood. I knew everything. I wanted it to end. My father chose the men that used my mother…. He would bring them home himself… It must have ended. Any other woman would have acted like my mother. And I wasn’t even sad about my father. After he died our relatives came over. Everyone kept asking about what had happened. I didn’t feel well but I wasn’t sad. I thought everything would be fine after a week. But my father’s relatives, who did not like my mother anyway, were suspicious of her. The police kept interrogating my mom. Finally my mother confessed to killing my father on the third day. They also arrested Habib based on my mother’s confessions.
(R): What was your mother convicted of?
(HN): She got 5 years for assisting in the homicide, 3 years for attempting to cover up the crime and stoning for committing adultery. She repented 3 times, and her prison sentence ended 3 years ago. Eleven years… for what crime? Because her only way of escaping that terrible life was to kill my father? Or because she didn’t know how to lie well enough to cover the truth?
(R): Do you have anything else to say Hiro?
(HN): My mother has been in prison for 11 years – 11 years! Why? What should have she done? Continued that lifestyle? What could she do? What guarantee was there that my sister and I would not end up with the same fate? The person who was murdered was my father. Which daughter likes to speak badly of her father? But every time I think about the past… My mother had no other choice!
