BURNED TO DEATH FOR BEING TOO WESTERN
Daughters tell of their torment as father kills mother in horrif ic act of revenge
THE twin daughters of a woman burned alive by her ex-husband have spoken for the first time of their nightmare.
Glara and Gloria, pictured above, reveal in today’s Mail on Sunday how their mother Ahdieh Khayatzadeh was so horrifically injured they were told to shut their eyes as they said farewell to her in hospital. Last week, their father Ahmad Yazdanparast, originally from Iran, was found guilty of murdering his ex-wife because she had become ‘Westernised’.
Yazdanparast, who will be sentenced next month, told the trial that in his home country, men were seen as superior to women and had authority over them.
But his businesswoman wife, left, who had arrived in Scotland unable to speak English had become ‘superior’ to him.
JUST an hour before she died in agony from horrific burns, Ahdieh Khayatzadeh’s 20-year old twin daughters, Gloria and Glara, were allowed into intensive care to say a last, heartbreaking goodbye. But before they got to her bedside, a nurse warned them both: ‘Close your eyes. Don’t look.’
Their 46-year old mother, her only crime to have become ‘Westernised’ in the eyes of her Muslim ex-husband, had suffered 95 per cent burns in the shocking attack.
She was so unrecognisable that paramedics at the scene couldn’t tell if she was a man or a woman.
For anyone seeing a parent in this state, it would be traumatic beyond belief.
For Gloria and Glara, the tragedy is harder to bear because the person responsible for killing their mother is their father, Ahmad Yazdanparast, 61.
Last Tuesday, at the High Court in Edinburgh, he was found guilty of murdering Ahdieh at her beauty salon in Stirling last October.
The couple, both originally from Iran, had separated in 2010 and their divorce – prompted by Ahdieh – had just come through.
Yazdanparast said she no longer wanted to have sex and did not listen or co-operate with him because she had become Westernised.
Unable to accept that his wife no longer wanted to be married to him, Yazdanparast doused her in petrol and set her alight. He would claim afterwards that in his home country, the man is ‘superior to the woman and has authority over her’. But his wife, who had amassed a £700,000 fortune, had become more successful than him.
Today, in an interview with The Scottish Mail on Sunday, the couple’s daughters talk for the first time about their father’s murder of the woman who was the ‘heart of their family’.
An emotional Gloria says: ‘I can only liken it to the worst nightmare you can’t wake up from. Every morning I still open my eyes and think, “Did that actually happen?” How could he have done this to her? It’s just not human.’
According to both girls, their mother had been deeply unhappy for years before finally plucking up the courage to leave her husband and start a new life with her three children, Gloria, Glara and 12-year-old son Reza.
Glara adds: ‘Dad had brought Mum
‘I felt that something sinister had happened’
over to Scotland from Iran when she was in her early twenties. She had no family here and couldn’t speak a word of English. He was mentally abusive to her from the start. He was never kind or showed her understanding.
‘She felt trapped, lonely and far from home. But she was so strong and determined to make things work. When we were born, she went to college and did a hairdressing and beauty course and got diplomas in both of them. Later, she did a teaching degree – all the while looking after two small children and learning English. She wanted to make her life successful and to have a happy family. The problem m was Dad.’
By the girls’ own admission, Yazdanparast, who owned a takeaway, was a dis- tant, uncaring father.
‘He didn’t know when our r birthdays were or what year r at school we were in,’ Gloria a recalls. ‘Mum did absolutely everything. She was the heart in our home. Dad would sit at the dinner table without saying a word and, when he did, it was to pick a fight. He never took us out or played with us like our friends’ fathers did with them.’
Glara remembers one Christmas when they were ten years old. ‘We’d bought him a present but, as usual, he had nothing for us so he just took some money out of his pocket and handed it over. That’s what he was like. He never made much effort at all.’
Gloria adds: ‘As we grew older we noticed the awful atmosphere in the house. By now, Mum had set up her salon business and was lecturing in beauty at Glasgow University.
‘She was earning her own money and giving us as many opportunities as she could. We did tennis, art, everything. She couldn’t have done more.’
Glara says: ‘Mum had become financially independent and Dad was so unpleasant all the time that Gloria and I kept our distance from him. He had lost all our respect and he knew it.’
Matters came to a head in August 2010 when an argument got out of hand and Yazdanparast was arrested for trying to attack his wife. He moved out of the family home and Ahdieh started divorce proceedings.
‘It was a relief when he finally left,’ Gloria says. ‘For years there had been this huge cloud over our house and now it was gone.’
For the next three years, Yazdanparast opposed the divorce proceedings, becoming increasingly more bitter and abusive. One Christmas, he left a message on the family’s answering machine threatening to kill his wife.
‘Of course, we didn’t believe him,’ says Glara. ‘Who could ever, in a million years, imagine their father doing that? We just thought he was being nasty and difficult as usual.’
But on October 12 last year Yazdanparast finally snapped. ‘It was all about money,’ remembers Gloria. ‘He had just found out Mum was getting half of everything in the divorce settlement and that’s what triggered him.
‘I remember, a few days before the attack, he was sitting in a car outside Mum’s salon looking really wound up. He felt Mum had won.’
Certainly, evidence at the crime scene gave some clue as to what might
have been going on in Yazdanparast’s mind. During the fatal attack he scattered cards bearing messages including ‘Enough is enough’ and ‘Game is over’.
Glara recalls: ‘We were both home studying when we got a call from a friend to say there was a fire at Dad’s takeaway. I don’t know why, but I sensed immediately that he’d done something awful.’
Knowing their mother’s salon, Venus Hair and Beauty, was in the basement next door to the takeaway, Glara rushed to the scene only to find the area cordoned off by police. She says: ‘My legs were like jelly and I couldn’t stop shaking. Mum and Dad had been taken to hospital and all the police could tell me was that there had been a small fire.
‘At the police station, they refused to tell us anything – they were shielding us, I suppose. But I had a horrible feeling something sinister had happened. I insisted on calling the hospital and a doctor told me he couldn’t tell me over the phone what had happened.’
It was only after they were driven to Forth Valley Royal Hospital in a police car that the full horror emerged and the girls were told their mother would not survive.
Glara says: ‘Nobody actually ever said Dad had done it. We just knew. The shock is indescribable. It didn’t feel real. We didn’t go to see Dad in the burns unit. If I’m honest, I was hoping he would die.
‘He got out of the salon with 6 per
‘If I’m honest, I was hoping Dad would die ’
cent burns but what he did to Mum was so appalling we were warned to not look at her.
‘The nurse advised us not to go in; she said it was something we really shouldn’t see. But we really wanted to say a last goodbye, so they advised us to keep our eyes closed. That’s what we did. We went in separately with our eyes shut. It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do.’ She adds: ‘I hate Dad all the more for that. I couldn’t even see my mother, one last time, when I was telling her I loved her. What kind of animal does that to somebody else?’
The next time they would see their father was in court and they admit they found his evidence sickening.
Gloria says: ‘He only once looked us in the eye, on the first day, and after that he never so much as glanced our way. He has never once said sorry or admitted what he did. He just made up one ridiculous lie after another to try to save himself.
‘Mum hadn’t spoken a word to him in three years and he made out in court as if they were getting back together again.’
Yazdanparast denied murdering his ex-wife, claiming he had acted in self-defence after she threw something at him and he ‘felt a burning sensation’. He told jurors he was ‘a British Muslim’, that in Iran he would have authority over her but she had become ‘Westernised’.
Judge Lady Wise said it was ‘a very serious and distressing case’ and only one punishment, life imprisonment, could be imposed. But she must set a minimum period before the killer is eligible to seek parole and adjourned sentence until later this month for reports.
Glara admits she feels furious when well-meaning people comment that they’ve lost two parents. ‘We haven’t,’ she says. ‘He was never there for us. How can we have lost two parents when we only, really, ever had one?’
The twins remain angry about the way police handled earlier complaints about their father’s behaviour towards their mother. Glara says: ‘They take each incident as a separate thing and don’t try to foresee what’s going to happen. I knew something was going to happen; they should have known too.’
The girls, both business studies students, have put their final year of university on hold until they feel ready to cope.
‘It’s not what Mum would have wanted,’ Glara admits. ‘She would have hated for this to destroy us, to ruin all the hopes and dreams she had for our future. And we’re determined, for her, that it’s not going to. Dad might think he has taken Mum away from us but he can’t touch the memories we have.
‘My mum was the most kindhearted and beautiful lady inside and out and we feel so honoured to have had such an inspirational lady in our lives.’