Denmark summons Iran envoy over reports of illegal divorces

Iranian women were reportedly pressured by the embassy to accept local imams’ rulings on custody and divorce terms

Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said he had reacted ‘very quickly’ to reports Iran was pressuring women into accepting punitive terms to divorce settlements. Reuters

Denmark has summoned the Iranian ambassador over reports the Embassy has pressured Muslim women to accept illegal divorce terms drawn up by local imams.

Just hours earlier, the government announced a crackdown on controversial Muslim marriage contracts, calling for up to three years imprisonment for imams formulating them.

The issue came to the forefront last month when one woman revealed she had been forced to accept divorce terms that stated she would lose custody of her children if she remarried.

Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said it was “unacceptable” and has summoned Iran’s Danish envoy, Afsaneh Nadipour, to the Danish Foreign Ministry to answer questions over the Embassy’s involvement.

“I take the rumours extremely seriously that the Iranian Embassy, unsolicited, had contacted women living here to pressure them to have their Danish divorce papers religiously validated,” he said.

Mr Kofod said the Scandinavian country would “in no way accept if an embassy is involved in cases that are contrary to Danish law – and contrary to our basic democratic values in Denmark.”

“The kind of religious control that we have heard about in the media does not belong in Denmark,” he added.

On Wednesday, the Danish government announced new measures to tackle the problem.

It is proposing a law that will increase the punishment for psychological violence so that it also includes negative social control, Sharia divorce contracts and other practices used to deter citizens from getting divorced.

"When we see imams getting involved in divorce cases in such a negative way, we need to take this more seriously. And I think a change of the law can help do that," Immigration Minister Mattias Tesfaye said, according to Berlingske newspaper.

Last month, an imam in Odense was reported to the police for producing a Sharia Law divorce contract that ruled a woman would lose her children if she did not fulfil a list of unreasonable requirements.

It also banned her from moving more than 130km away from her ex-husband and ordered her to pay him 75,000 kroner ($11,856) to be divorced.