An Iraqi teenage girl was brutally murdered by her father in an “honour killing” after she fell in love with a British soldier in Basra.
Seventeen-year-old Rand Abdel-Qader told her best friend how she had fallen for Paul, a 22-year-old she met at a charity where she worked as a volunteer.
When her father learned she had been seen speaking to a foreigner he rushed home and butchered her, strangling and stabbing her while screaming that he was “cleansing his honour”.
He was arrested, but Iraqi police took no action. His wife has since left him and is in hiding.
The Ministry of Defence was last night trying to trace the soldier. Officials stressed he appeared to have done nothing wrong by befriending the girl.
While there is no suggestion the two had any physical relationship, the case raises questions about the training given to British forces in understanding cultural values in a city where 47 women died in “honour killings” last year.[...]
On March 16 – two months after Rand last saw Paul – her father Abdel-Qader Ali heard from a friend that his daughter had been seen speaking to the soldier at the charity project.
Recalling Rand’s murder, her weeping mother Leila Hussein said: “I screamed and called out for her two brothers so they could get their father away. But when he told them the reason, instead of saving her they helped him end her life.”
Abdel-Qader Ali stood on the girl’s throat until she suffocated and then stabbed her, all the time shouting that his honour was being cleansed.
He was arrested and released within two hours. Sergeant Ali Jabbar of Basra police said: “The father has very good contacts in the Basra government.”
Because her family considered her impure, Rand was given only a simple burial. Her uncles spat in her grave to show their disgust.
Two weeks later her mother demanded a divorce from Ali, and she now campaigns against honour killings.
She lives in fear of reprisals. “I was beaten and had my arm broken by him,” she said. “No man can accept being left by a woman in Iraq.”[...]
H/T JammieWearingFool Via Larwyn
Related:
[Update 3: Reward doubled to $20,000] Sarah and Amina Said’s Family Fight to Keep Their Deaths in the Public Eye
[Update 4] Texas: Dis-Honor killing of two sisters
Brigitte Gabriel on Honor Killings
When religious devotion outweighs the sanctity of life
Shame on the father, brothers, and who ever agree with this act.
This is a grosome murder that no matter what the girl did. Not even God will allow this to happen to any one let alone this is your owen daughter.
Life in person for the father is what I say.
Wake up people, what century are in to find a reason to kill.
Scarlett, thank you for blogging about this important issue. Here are a couple ideas:
1. Why don’t we start economically boycotting countries that continue to treat their women like this and the companies that do business with them? We could do for women what the boycott of South Africa did for blacks when they were living under apartheid.
2. Why don’t we write to our representatives and leaders and demand that they withhold some meaningful portion of our aid to these countries unless and until they materially, measurably, sustainably improve their human rights track records?
Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
“Reclaiming Honor in Jordan”
http://www.redroom.com/author/ellen-r-sheeley
The problem that most Americans do not understand is that Islam never got out of the 7th century, and i is a religion by design to keep people in subjection to one person’s authority. Islam and democracy do not mix, and anyone who says Islam is a peaceable religion has not read the Koran.
Link
Dis-Honour killing’s Aussie link
http://doctorbulldog.wordpress.com/?p=5635
Its hard to think up a worthwhile reply to this. May they rot in hell.
Oh I’m sure they will rot in hell. Honor killings may have been understood back in the dark days of humanity. But it is the 21st century so there is NO excuse. They are evil monsters.
The STOP HONORCIDE! campaign was launched on Mother’s Day 2008. The goal of the campaign is to prosecute honorcides to the fullest extent of the law. We want honorcide to be classified as a hate crime and we advocate for every existing hate crime legislation to be amended to include honorcide.
http://www.reformislam.org/honorcide/