Honor over Life

Girl slain after dating Marine

As if the hostage situation were not complex enough, a new problem developed last week when a 23-year-old Tehran college girl, allegedly pregnant by a U.S. Marine hostage, was murdered by her own enraged brother. Said the brother after strangling his sister, then hanging her from an iron post: "The stigma of betrayal by a U.S. spy could only be washed away with blood."

The girl, identified only as Azam in the Iranian press, reportedly dated the Marine before the U.S. embassy was seized by militants last Nov. 4 (he was not identified; nine Marines are held hostage). According to the Iranian attorney general's office, her family filed a seduction complaint against him about five months ago, but the subsequent embassy takeover blocked legal action because the militants holding the Marine refused to cooperate with civil authorities.

As the girl's condition became increasingly apparent, she agreed to marry an Iranian taxi driver to save her family from disgrace. But the marriage fell through, and the brother, in a fit of anger, killed her. A male fetus was reported to have been removed from the girl's womb, and blood tests were carried out, presumably to determine paternity.

What raises this incident above the level of a mere police report is that the alleged father faces possible trial under both Iranian and Islamic law. For the crime of fornication with a virgin, he could receive three to 15 years imprisonment under civil law, and a public flogging of up to 100 lashes with a whip under the religious code. The embassy militants now say they are "prepared to hand [the Marine] over to the revolutionary prosecutor's office to be questioned."

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