TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s semi-official ILNA news agency is reporting that two brothers in police custody have confessed to decapitating the wife of one of them, after a gruesome video of the victim circulated online.
The report said the two men were arrested four hours after the killing on Saturday in the southwestern city of Ahvaz. Tens of thousands of people viewed the video on social media, which showed a man holding a large knife while carrying a severed head with long hair in another hand.
ILNA quoted a police officer, Col. Sohrab Hosseinnejad, as saying that “the defendants confessed to the murder during the police investigation and were introduced to the judicial authority.”
The report cited family problems as the likely motive, but added that the issue is under investigation. Police did not release the men’s names or elaborate further on the killing or who filmed the video.
Such violence is rare in Iran.
In April 2021, a 50-year-old man shot to death his 9-year-old son and seven of his in-laws in the city of Ahvaz.
In 2020, in the northern Gilan province, a father decapitated his daughter because he did not approve of her boyfriend.
