A husband and wife, whose teenage son was convicted of killing the boyfriend of their younger daughter, have been sentenced to ten years in prison after a Swedish court of appeal ruled that they were behind the honour killing.
Abbas Rezai, 20, was found gruesomely murdered in his apartment in Hogsby, southern Sweden, in November 2005. He had been beaten, burned with hot oil, stabbed repeatedly and partially scalped, with most of the injuries inflicted after his death.
It is thought that Rezai was murdered because of a relationship he was having with the Afghan family’s 16 year-old daughter. Her brother, just 17 at the time, was convicted as the sole perpetrator. Even though police admitted that the teenager couldn’t have acted alone, the parents, who were initially implicated, were acquitted of the crime.
However, a few years after his conviction, the son, now 23, changed his story and said his parents were to blame. They denied this but were found guilty by the Gota Court of Appeal after the younger sister and another relative backed up the son’s claim.
Both the mother and the father will be deported from Sweden after serving their sentences. The 23 year-old son will only serve another year and four months in a juvenile detention centre after having his charges reduced to accessory to murder.