They Were the Nice, Older Couple Next Door. Then the First Body Turned Up.

[Demovictory9]

They Were the Nice, Older Couple Next Door. Then the First Body Turned Up.


Babak, left, with his parents Akbar Khorramdin and Iran Mousavi, on stage after the screening of his film. Credit...Yasaman Zohoortalab

An Iranian couple has confessed to murdering and dismembering their son, years after killing a daughter and her husband. They are not sorry.

The older couple first came to the public eye on a winter night in Tehran, when their film director son invited them to the stage after a screening. They were frail, and seemingly shy, and the younger man helped his mother up the stairs, then draped his arm around his father’s shoulder.

That was five years ago.

Now their son is dead, and Akbar Khorramdin, 81, and his wife, Iran Mousavi, 74, are back on the public stage, accused of his murder and, in a twist that has shocked and riveted Iranians, the killings of a daughter and a son-in-law over the course of a decade. The victims were drugged, suffocated, stabbed and then dismembered, the authorities say.

The couple has confessed to the crimes, but if Mr. Khorramdin, a retired army colonel, and Ms. Mousavi, a homemaker, are remorseful, they have done a good job hiding it.

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For Iranians, home is synonymous with sanctuary, and elderly parents, especially mothers, are revered as saint-like figures. And so they have reacted with bafflement and then outrage to every twist and turn of the case, and to the parents’ behavior after their arrests.

Photographs in Iranian media have shown Mr. Khorramdin clad in prison pajamas flashing a victory sign. He told the authorities that he would do it all over again — and might even kill his other two adult children, too, if he were released, according to news reports.


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/05/world/middleeast/iran-parents-murders.html?action=click&algo=bandit-all-surfaces-engagement-time-weight&block=trending_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=254700261&impression_id=6630c730-de1e-11eb-8e5a-8ffb1b5e62ef&index=0&pgtype=Article&pool=pool%2F91fcf81c-4fb0-49ff-bd57-a24647c85ea1®ion=footer&req_id=505707342&surface=eos-most-popular-story&variant=4_bandit-all-surfaces-engagement-time-weight

[orleans]

1. what a bizarre story.

even more bizarre considering they can kill their kids and that's okay (10 yrs in prison), but when you kill you're son-in-law.... dun dun dun

very sad for the murdered adult children.

[Bucky]

2. Damn

This is so heartbreaking. The lack of remorse, the coldness...

We're not so far above the jungle. We're hired wired to exert power and dominance over others

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/chimpanzees-murder-cannibalism-senegal

[Duppers]

3. Motive? Article behind paywall.

[Demovictory9]

4. read this:

In televised interviews, the parents said they had killed their children because they disapproved of their lifestyles. They accused their son of being physically aggressive, and said he was freeloading off them and having sex with girlfriends. Their daughter, they claimed, was addicted to drugs and drank alcohol, while her husband was abusive and dealt drugs.

[Duppers]

6. Thank you!

"Lifestyles" = opposing religious values in all conservative groups, areas, countries.

Conform or be killed. There's some very sick pathology going on with those psychopathic parents. (Redundant wording, I know.)

Their crimes are so sick they should be tortured!! Their own children, my gawd!! This is what religion does!!

In the conservative U.S. South, religion inflicts a thousand tiny cuts into a person psyche. Done with it.

- proud atheist

[herding cats]

5. 👇

Judge Mohammad Shahriari, who presides over criminal prosecutions in Tehran, said the investigators believe the motive for the murders was family disputes. The couple are undergoing psychiatric evaluations, officials told Iranian media.

(Snip)

In televised interviews, the parents said they had killed their children because they disapproved of their lifestyles. They accused their son of being physically aggressive, and said he was freeloading off them and having sex with girlfriends. Their daughter, they claimed, was addicted to drugs and drank alcohol, while her husband was abusive and dealt drugs.

Friends of Babak and Arezou say those descriptions are impossible to reconcile with the people they knew.

“For those of us who knew Babak, this is all unbelievable and very strange,” said Nima Abbaspour, a 46-year-old film director in Tehran who helped him make his first movie. “They looked like a regular family. He was respectable and mild mannered, a very calm guy.”

“Arezou was a very quiet girl. She never harmed anyone and growing up she was very obedient and didn’t even have boyfriends,” said Jaleh, 47, a classmate and neighbor. Jaleh said after Arezou disappeared abruptly, friends would ask about her whenever they ran into her mother. She told them her daughter had migrated to Turkey.

The mom now says: "her husband was abusive toward her and she accused him of raping Arezou."
True or false, it was one of those messed up situations where it was a "family honor" thing, which is an excuse for validating dysfunctional, abusive institutions.

[Duppers]

7. Excellent way to describe conservative religious norms...

"Dysfunctional, abusive institutions."

👍 Thanks!

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Guardian article from May:

After being taken into custody, the couple confessed they had also killed their son-in-law 10 years previously, and their daughter three years ago, in the same way. Some of the discussion of the case on social media focused on why the couple’s disappearance had not prompted an investigation.

“Regardless of what the father claiming is right or not, it is clear that the police were negligent to not investigate the fate of two missing people (daughter Arezo and her husband),” said the reporter Maziar Khosravi on Twitter.

The parents claimed they killed the son-in-law because he was abusive, murdered their daughter because she became addicted to drugs, and targeted their son because he was single and having relationships with students, according to Hussein Rahimi, a Tehran police chief, quoted in newspapers.

During the court hearing, Akbar told Hamshahri reporters he had no regrets. “I don’t regret what I did with the cooperation of my wife. They were corrupted and I thank God.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/21/babak-khorramdin-iranian-couple-arrested-for-of-film-maker-son-47

[left-of-center2012]

10. Here's a link

https://www.post-gazette.com/news/world/2021/07/05/Iran-murders-Akbar-Khorramdin-Iran-Mousavi-Babak-father-mother-son-family-killings-Tehran-confession/stories/202107050071

[vercetti2021]

9. Jesus christ

Opposing views = death? Oh they are the embodiment of the conservative dream. Execute what isn't white, straight, and christian.