Iran 10-year-old files for divorce from her 15-year-old
husband
TEHRAN, Sept 26 (AFP) - A 10-year-old Iranian girl has filed for divorce
from her 15-year-old husband after only eight days of marriage on grounds
of mistreatment, the government-run Iran paper said Tuesday.
It quoted the boy as saying that the day after the wedding they had
had a fight because she wanted to play with her dolls.
"On the last day, I beat my wife and my mother-in-law and ran off
to my mother's house," the paper quoted him saying, while the girl
said: "I was married before, but not any more."
Iran's reformist-dominated parliament last month approved a motion to
allow the judiciary and not parents to decide whether boys under 17 and
girls under 14 years of age can marry.
Several religious MPs belonging to parliament's conservative minority
expressed their disapproval with the motion, saying that Islam's sharia
law which sets the marriage age at nine for girls and 14 for boys should
apply.
Before the 1979 Islamic revolution, the age of majority for both sexes
was 16 years. Iranian officials regularly propagate marriage as a means
to prevent "social corruption" among young people.
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