Iranian police announced the identification of 4 suspects in the murder of the prominent Iranian film director, Dariush Mehrjoi, and his wife, screenwriter Wahida Mohammadifar, and the arrest of two of them.
The director and his wife were found murdered in their home in the city of Karaj in Al-Raz Province, north of the capital, Tehran, according to what Tasnim News Agency announced on Saturday evening.
According to an official in the judicial authorities, the director sent a message to his daughter to invite her to dinner, and when she arrived an hour and a half later, she found the bodies of her parents with fatal wounds to the neck.
What the police found
In press statements by the Iranian Police Command spokesman, Saeed Muntazar al-Mahdi, on Sunday, he said that 4 suspects had been identified, and two were arrested, while no surveillance camera was found in Mehrjoi’s villa, and that the cameras at the entrance to the town were out of order.
Regarding the traces of the crime that were found, he said that by using special dogs to detect this type of crime, “they found traces of the victims’ blood on the killers’ escape route,” and by inspecting the crime scene, it was found that there were signs of forced entry, but without damage to the doors.
The Iranian Fars News Agency quoted an informed source as saying that suspects had been arrested, and no foreigners were among them. Talk had previously been raised about a role for Afghan immigrants, expecting the crime to be motivated by personal grudges or theft, especially if gold and mobile phones were stolen.
Mizan News Agency, which is affiliated with the judicial authorities, says that the autopsy of the bodies of Dariush Mehrjoi and his wife showed that the cause of death was “severe bleeding as a result of injuries resulting from hitting the body with a knife or sharp object,” and that Mehrjoi was beaten with a stick or a hard object.
Condemning the crime, the Supreme Council of Producers and the Iranian Film Directors Association asked in a joint statement how a man and his wife were killed in “their safest place, in their home?”, demanding that the truth of what happened be quickly revealed.
The mystery continues
Iranian journalist Vahid Ozeri comments to Sky News Arabia that until now the perpetrator has not been known, and no evidence has been found at the crime scene, questioning the official statements about the arrest of two of its perpetrators.
The Iranian writer described Mehrjoi as “the best director in Iran, and his absence is a huge loss for cinema, and this pain will cause sadness and discomfort to art lovers for many years.”
For his part, researcher on Iranian affairs, Masoud Al-Fak, told Sky News Arabia that no party has confirmed that the killing of the director was political; This is evidenced by the fact that “he was not politically active, and it appears that the killing of him and his wife was aimed at robbery, according to what was reported in the media.”
However, the mystery increases with what was stated in an interview published by “Etemad” newspaper, on Sunday, with the director’s wife, which was conducted previously, in which she said that she had recently been threatened by someone with a knife, and that her house had been robbed, without going into details.
Who is Mehrajoui and his wife?
Mehrjoi, 83 years old, is considered one of the most prominent Iranian filmmakers. His name shone as a director, producer, and screenwriter during six decades in which he faced censorship, before and after the revolution in 1979. Among his most famous works are the films “The Cow,” “Mr. Hollow,” “The Postman,” “Mina’s Circle,” “Centauri,” “Hamoun,” “Laila,” and “Bri.” “Al-Qura” received the Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1971. In 2014, he received the French “Knight of Arts and Letters” award from the French Ambassador to Iran. During his objection to the cancellation of his film “L’Minor,” he said in a video message: “I can no longer bear it. I will come and sit with my assistant in the Ministry of Guidance. I want to fight, come on, kill me. This is my chest. Kill me, but I will take my rights,” according to what was published by the opposition website “Iran International”. His wife, Wahida Mohammadi Far, who is 54 years old, also worked in the field of screenwriting and scenography, and began her career in 1996 by acting in the film “Leila” by Maharajoui.
