Kirkuk, Iraq: A father burned his three teenage daughters with boiling water before shooting two of them to death, after he suspected that they had been sexually active.
Despite medical examinations showing that the girls were virgins, the father justified his actions by claming to have killed them to defend his honour, as reported by Reuters.
The “honour killing” which took place near the northern city of Kirkuk in Iraq resulted in the father being sentenced to two years in jail.
The short jail sentence was not much of a surprise to many Iraqi women, as “honour killings’ were backed up by Article 409 of Iraq’s penal code.
The Article lessens the murder sentence to a maximum of three years for a man who catches his wife or female dependents committing adultery and then commits an “honour killing”.
The Article does not do the same for women, as reported in an old case of the 12-year-old girl who was sentenced to 15 years in jail for killing her father, after walking in on him committing adultery.
Iraqi women activists along with Ibtihal Al Zaidi, the Minister of State for Women’s Affairs are working hard to change the law, says Reuters.
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