Iranian American woman poisons, burns son to avenge husband's cheating

Apr 26, 2017

Iranians in Diaspora , Society

Independent Aggregator of Iran-related News/Events, Kodoom.com: An Iranian-American boy in Maryland is a recent victim of arranged marriages. An Iran-American Maryland mother has been sentenced to 50 years in prison for fatally poisoning her five-year-old son with cold medicine and setting a car on fire with his body inside to cover up the murder according to news on Yahoo.

Enraged by an acrimonious divorce and custody battle with the father of her only child, Narges Shafeirad, 35, murdered the boy out of jealousy and revenge, prosecutors said in court papers. Shafeirad was angry at her soon-to-be ex-husband, Hamid Dana, 53, and jealous of his relationship with his nanny, prosecutors said. Before killing their son, Daniel Dana, she allegedly told him, “I will make you cry. You will be sorry,” according to court records.

Shafeirad pleaded guilty in 2016 in exchange for the 50-year sentence, NBC reports.

According to court records, on June 15, 2015, the same day she and Dana had scheduled their final divorce and custody proceedings, Shafeirad forced her son to ingest more than an entire bottle cold medicine, even though the boy was not sick. That night, she continued to give him lethal doses of the medicine — which contained diphenhydramine, the active ingredient in over-the-counter medications such as Sominex, Unisom and Benadryl — every two to four hours until he died, according to the court records. The amount of diphenhydramine in Daniel’s blood was 150 percent of the amount that would kill an adult, the medical examiner’s report states. Scrapes and bruises found on the boy’s face — particularly around his mouth — suggest that his mother repeatedly force-fed him the medicine, the court records said. Prosecutors said she then tried to cover up the murder by setting a car she borrowed from a friend on fire with her son’s lifeless body stuffed in the backseat on the floor. When police arrived at the scene, they found Shafeirad lying on the ground next to the burning car with burns on 40 percent of her body, screaming for help, according to the arrest warrant. But the car was locked, with the boy inside. Shafeirad was arrested about two weeks later, when an autopsy on the boy showed he was poisoned.

The boy’s father, Dana, who is 18 years older than Narges says the marriage was "arranged" by his family in Iran in 2007. The family settled in Gaithersburg, where Dana ran a business. But after “lots of problems and disagreements,” and allegedly cheating, the couple separated and are now divorced.

Each year, many single Iranian American men travel to Iran to meet women who are much younger but interested in marriage to secure US residency.

Emotional and vengeful break ups are also common in Iran. The phrase in Persian for taking revenge from someone by making their loved one pay is "Daghesh Rr roo delash mizaram" or literally "I will assure they suffer from a painful loss of a loved one!"

According to Seyed Mehdi Mirmiran, an Iranian American community organizer, using children as a "bargaining chip" is unfortunately common among many Iranian couples: "It also exists in other cultures, but the problem is we never talk about it, we never address it, we never think about it [in the Iranian community]. We are so proud of our Persian heritage and culture that we never evaluate them. We never take a critical look at them. We recite much of thoughtful prose and poems of Saadi but do we really consider what they mean, do we practice what we praise in his poems and pros?"

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