Bodies of Iran Pair to Be Sent Home Together

The Iranian bride who died inside a suitcase at Los Angeles International Airport and the new husband who committed suicide three days after he failed to smuggle her into the United States will be going back to Iran together this weekend.

Bill Pierce of Westwood Village Mortuary said that the body of Mahmoud Ayazi, 31, was flown from Sacramento on Tuesday to join the body of Kataun Safaie, 20, whom he had married nearly a month ago in Iran.

Sacramento friends of Ayazi, an electrician and graduate of California State University, Sacramento, said the newlyweds had taken the desperate chance of smuggling Safaie into the country in a suitcase last week when her application for a tourist visa was turned down by U.S. consular officials in Frankfurt, West Germany, where the pair had flown from Iran after their wedding.

Pierce is awaiting paper work from the Algerian Embassy in Washington, which has been handling such matters for Iran since the United States broke off formal diplomatic relations with the country after the capture of the embassy and taking of hostages in 1979.

From Los Angeles, Pierce said, the pair will be flown back to Iran for funerals with their two families, who had arranged the marriage. They will be flown home on the same airline route that brought them to the United States--Los Angeles to Frankfurt to Tehran.