Father in "Not Without My Daughter" book dies in Tehran

Aug 22, 2009, 19:48 GMT

Tehran - The father in the bestseller book 'Not Without My Daughter' by Betty Mahmoody died in Tehran at the age of 70 after a kidney problem, one of his relatives told official news agency IRNA Saturday.

Bozorg Mahmoody was the main character in his ex-wife's book which exposed Iranian husbands' privileges in child custody cases due to the Islamic laws.

The book dealt with the Mahmoody family, including the little daughter Mahtab, which returned from the US to Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution, in line with the husband's religious sentiments and close political ideology with the post-monarchy clergy system.

After Betty Mahmoody realized that neither she nor her daughter could bear the living conditions in Iran, especially the sudden change of her husband from a Western-style physician to a dogmatic Muslim, she decided to return to the US with her daughter.

The husband however prohibited her from taking their little daughter to the US by using the Islamic laws which grant the father child custody.

The desperate American woman however paid smugglers to take her out of the country and after an adventurous trip, mother and child crossed the border to Turkey.

Both the book and the 1991 film - directed by Brian Gilbert, starring Sally Field and Alfred Molina - made Iranians quite upset for having tarnished the image of Iranians worldwide.

Observers say that although the book by Betty Mahmoody, now 64, did not represent all Iranian men married to foreign nationals and exaggerated several aspects, child custody laws in Iran still favour men.