Shari'a or not? Beheading of wife in NY State.

[Guest shebavon]

From Yahoo.

 

Muslim TV exec accused of beheading wife in NY

 

 

By CAROLYN THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer Carolyn Thompson, Associated Press Writer

 

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. – The crime drips with brutal irony: a woman decapitated, allegedly by her estranged husband, in the offices of the television network the couple founded with the hope of countering Muslim stereotypes.

 

Muzzammil "Mo" Hassan is accused of beheading his wife last week, days after she filed for divorce. Authorities have not discussed the role religion or culture might have played, but the slaying gave rise to speculation that it was the sort of "honor killing" more common in countries half a world away, including the couple's native Pakistan.

 

Funeral services for Aasiya Hassan, 37, were Tuesday. Her 44-year-old husband is scheduled to appear for a felony hearing Wednesday.

 

The Hassans lived in Orchard Park — a well-off Buffalo suburb that hadn't seen a homicide since 1986 — and started Bridges TV there in 2004 with the message of developing understanding between North America and the Middle East and South Asia. The network, available across the U.S. and Canada, was believed to be the first English-language cable station aimed at the rapidly growing Muslim demographic.

 

Orchard Park Police Chief Andrew Benz said his officers had responded to domestic incidents involving the couple, most recently Feb. 6, the day Mo Hassan was served with the divorce papers and an order of protection.

 

"I've never heard him raise his voice," said Paul Moskal, who became friendly with the couple while he was chief counsel for the FBI in Buffalo. Moskal would answer questions in forums aired on Bridges TV that were intended to improve understanding between Muslim-Americans and law enforcement.

 

"His personal life kind of betrayed what he tried to portray publicly," Moskal said.

 

On Feb. 12, Hassan went to a police station and told officers his wife was dead at the TV studio.

 

"We found her laying in the hallway the offices were off of," Benz said. Aasiya Hassan's head was near her body.

 

"I don't know if (the method of death) does mean anything," said the chief, who would not discuss what weapon may have been used. "We certainly want to investigate anything that has any kind of merit. It's not a normal thing you would see."

 

Hassan was not represented by an attorney at an initial appearance on a charge of second-degree murder. Neither police nor the Erie County district attorney's office knew if he had hired a lawyer.

 

The New York president of the National Organization for Women, Marcia Pappas, condemned prosecutors for referring to the death as an apparent case of domestic violence.

 

"This was, apparently, a terroristic version of 'honor killing,'" a statement from NOW said.

 

Nadia Shahram, who teaches family law and Islam at the University at Buffalo Law School, explained honor killing as a practice still accepted among fanatical Muslim men who feel betrayed by their wives.

 

"If a woman breaks the law which the husband or father has placed for the wife or daughter, honor killing has been justified," said Shahram, who was a regular panelist on a law show produced by Bridges TV. "It happens all the time. It's been practiced in countries such as Pakistan and in India."

 

Acquaintances said Mo Hassan was not overtly religious — co-workers did not see him pray, for instance. But he seemed to adhere to many traditional practices.

 

Nancy Sanders, the television station's news director for 2 1/2 years, remembers him asking her to move her feet during her job interview so he would not see her legs. She was wearing a skirt and stockings.

 

He also would not let women enter his office unless his wife was there, and he blocked the station from airing a story about the first Muslim woman to win the title of Miss England in 2005, Sanders said.

 

Acquaintances said Aasiya Hassan was trained as an architect. Sanders described her as obedient to her husband, and that she wore a traditional hijab for a time but later stopped without explanation.

 

"She was beautiful, small, delicately built," she said, "while Mo would fill up a door frame. I always thought of him as a gentle giant."

 

Sanders, who left Bridges TV a year ago, said co-workers traded stories about Hassan's apparent violent streak, including one which had him running his wife's car off the road while the couple's two young children were inside. Aasiya herself never spoke of it, she said.

 

"I just do not feel it was an honor killing," Sanders added. "I think it was domestic abuse that got out of control."

 

Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita did not immediately respond to The Associated Press' request for a copy of the order of protection issued against Mo Hassan. Divorce records are sealed in New York state. Aasiya Hassan's lawyer would not reveal the reasons for the divorce filing.

 

Hassan graduated with an MBA from the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester in 1996, according to the TV station's Web site. Bridges broadcasts all over the United States and in Canada on various cable providers and Verizon FiOS. As of 6 p.m. Tuesday, the network was not broadcasting in the Buffalo area.

 

There was no answer at the network on Tuesday and it's Web site has a message saying Bridges is shocked and saddened and requests privacy.

 

___

[Guest fountainhall]

This is a rather similar story commented on in today's papers. Apparently the eye-for-an-eye punishment is due to be carried out in the next few weeks. I can't find background on the net from Bangkok papers, but this appeared in The Guardian at the time of the judgement.

 

 

"A man who blinded a woman in an acid attack after she spurned his marriage proposals has been sentenced to the same punishment, in a literal application of Iran's sharia eye-for-an-eye laws.

 

In a highly unusual judgment, Tehran province criminal court ordered Majid Movahedi, 27, to be blinded in both eyes from drops of acid in response to a plea from his victim, Ameneh Bahrami.

 

The punishment is legal under the sharia code of qisas, which allows retribution for violent crimes. The court also ordered Movahedi to pay compensation to the victim.

 

Bahrami was left horrifically disfigured after Movahedi threw a jar of acid in her face as she walked home from work in a busy Tehran neighbourhood in October 2004. She had previously complained to police about being threatened and harassed by Movahedi, who she had known while they were both university students, but had been told no action could be taken.

 

Since the attack, Bahrami has undergone 17 operations, some by surgeons in Spain, in an unsuccessful attempt to reconstruct her face. Her injuries led to the loss of one eye and left her blind in the other. The Iranian government has paid £22,500 towards her treatment.

 

Testifying in Movahedi's presence, she told the court that she wanted "to inflict the same life on him that he inflicted on me". Asked by the judge if she wanted Movahedi's face to be splashed with acid, she replied: 'That is impossible and horrific. Just drip 20 drops of acid in his eyes so he can realise what pain I am undergoing.'"

[Guest shebavon]

"This is a rather similar story commented on in today's papers. Apparently the eye-for-an-eye punishment is due to be carried out in the next few weeks."

 

Unfortunately. in recent years, there have been many instances of this sort of Theocratic abuses. The court in Tehran seems to be as bloodthirsty as the man who did this brutal act.

 

Perhaps it is too much to ask that Iranian society use this tragedy to look within. They will probably blame this situation too on the west, Israel, the US, and of course, the Jews.

[Guest fountainhall]

There's a discussion on another thread about punishments for mass murder and genocide which led me to raise the question: is there any punishment that might deter someone bent on such actions? I doubted it.

 

But if the penalty for blinding and horribly disfiguring a young lady is blinding by acid, and if this sentence is actually carried out instead of the aggressor putting up some cash, I wonder if this might, in effect, deter others from what seems a not uncommon type of attack in a few countries. Gruesome though it is, I just have a feeling it might.

[Guest fountainhall]

We have read of many instances of acid attacks in the Middle East, but this is the first time I have heard of one in a major western city. The following is from Associated Press on the yahoo website today.

 

"A man has been blinded after a stranger threw acid in his face following an argument in the street, police have said. The 58-year-old hospital cleaner was walking to work when he got into a row with another man in Belgravia, central London, early on Wednesday.

 

The man then produced a container and threw a liquid into the victim's face, leaving him blinded and in pain, police said. The attack happened at 3.45am at the junction of Cambridge Street and Clarendon Street in one of the ritziest parts of London. Police were called by a resident who heard the victim shouting for help and saw him staggering along Cambridge Street, bumping into parked cars.

 

The victim was taken to a specialist hospital where he is receiving treatment for burns to his face, which doctors believe were caused by some form of acid. Early indications are that he will lose his sight.

 

Det Sgt Darren Nayler, from the Westminster Serious Violence Unit, said: 'This was a vicious attack which has left the victim with serious injuries. The suspect used the acid to deliberately injure the victim, and the fact that he was carrying it around in his pocket in the first place, suggests that he intended all along to use it to cause harm.

 

'The area around Belgravia is one of the safest in the borough and it is the first time we have seen an attack of this nature anywhere in Westminster.'"

[Guest shebavon]

but this is the first time I have heard of one in a major western city.

 

I think I remember this having happened in New York City a decade or two ago, and more recently in South Florida.