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BABAKOT, Pakistan – In a tangle of bushes and trees outside a remote village in southwest Pakistan, six close male relatives of three teenage girls dug a 4-foot wide by 6-foot deep ditch, on a sweltering night in mid-July, and allegedly buried the girls alive. The girls' crime: they dared to defy the will of their fathers and the customs of their tribe and choose their own husbands. The mother of one of the girls and the aunt of another were shot and killed while begging for the girls’ lives, according to local media reports.

DESPAIR among human rights workers in Pakistan over a rash of so-called "honour killings" intensified yesterday when it was disclosed that a girl forced into marriage with a 45-year-old man at the age of nine had been killed by her parents because she asked for an annulment. The girl, 17, who had been fighting a lonely but successful legal battle, was coming out of court in the Punjabi city of Sahiwal after being granted the annulment by a judge when she was surrounded by a group of men and shot in view of police. The death of Saira Nusrat Bibi...

DESPAIR among human rights workers in Pakistan over a rash of so-called "honour killings" intensified yesterday when it was disclosed that a girl forced into marriage with a 45-year-old man at the age of nine had been killed by her parents because she asked for an annulment. The girl, 17, who had been fighting a lonely but successful legal battle, was coming out of court in the Punjabi city of Sahiwal after being granted the annulment by a judge when she was surrounded by a group of men and shot in view of police. The death of Saira Nusrat...

Five women were buried alive by their tribe in a mass honour killing prompted by their wish to choose their own husbands. The victims, who included three teenagers, were abducted at gunpoint, beaten and shot before being thrown into a ditch. They were still breathing as their bodies were covered with rocks and mud, according media reports and human rights activists. The incident occurred in Baba Kot, a remote village in Jafferabad district, after the women decided to defy tribal elders and arrange marriages in a civil court, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission. They were said to have...

ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: Balochistan Senator Sardar Israrullah Zehri stunned the upper house on Friday when he defended the recent incident of burying alive three teenage girls and two women in his province, saying it was part of “our tribal custom.” Senator Bibi Yasmin Shah of the PML-Q raised the issue citing a newspaper report that the girls, three of them aged between 16 and 18 years, had been buried alive a month ago for wishing to marry of their own will. The barbaric incident took place in a remote village of Jafarabad district and a PPP minister and some...

* Baloch senator Israrullah Zehri says members should not politicise issue ISLAMABAD: The killing of women for honour is a demand of the tribal traditions, Balochistan Senator Israrullah Zehri informed the Senate on Friday. Zehri was responding to Senator Yasmeen Shah’s statement in which she had drawn the House’s attention towards reports that five women had been buried alive in Balochistan in the name of honour. She called it a sheer violation of human rights. Zehri asked the members not to politicise the issue, as it was a matter of safeguarding the tribal traditions. Leader of the Opposition in Senate...

ISLAMABAD: Three teenage girls along with their two close elderly relatives were shot at before being buried alive in a desert of Balochistan by their tribesmen in the name of honour. The shocking reports of this horrible incident reaching the capital from different quarters revealed that the girls studying in classes 10 to 12 intended to marry men of their choice through a civil court by defying the centuries-old tribal traditions. When the fuming elders of Umrani tribe came to know about the intentions of these girls to appear before a local court, they picked them up from their homes...

Her crime? Converting to Christianity. "Saudi man kills daughter for converting to Christianity," by Mariam Al Hakeem for Zawya, August 13:Riyadh: A Saudi man working with the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice recently killed his daughter for converting to Christianity. According to sources close to the victim, the religious police member had cut the tongue of the girl and burned her to death following a heated debate on religion. The death of the girl sent shockwaves and websites where the victim used to write with various nick names have allocated special space to mourn her, while...

Saudir Arabian Muslim father cut out his daughter's tongue and lit her on fire upon learning that she had become a Christian. The child became curious about Jesus Christ after she read Christian material online, the Gulf News reported. Her father read of her Internet conversation, detached her tongue and burned her to death "following a heated debate on religion," according to an International Christian Concern report...

Quite a feat: CNN has pulled off the MSM equivalent of describing a spiral staircase without using one's hands. It has managed to produce a segment on "honor killings" and related violence in the UK . . . without using the word "Muslim" or "Islam." CNN Newsroom anchor Don Lemon introduced the segment this afternoon at 1:37 PM EDT. DON LEMON: Women forced into marriages, or killed for having the wrong boyfriend. So-called "honor crimes" are often committed by fathers or brothers when daughters do something that supposedly brings shame on the family. It's on the rise in Britain, and...

NO ONE knows just how many Muslim girls and women are murdered each year in the name of family "honor," since their deaths frequently go unreported and unpunished. The cases that do come to light are ghastly. "Women and young girls are set ablaze, strangled, shot at, clubbed, stabbed, tortured, axed, or stoned to death," a United Nations report noted in 2004. "Their bodies are found mutilated with their throat slit, or they are chopped into pieces and thrown in a ditch." The report singled out as especially horrifying the honor killing in Pakistan of "a 16-year-old girl who was...

A Muslim father accused of murdering his daughter in a so-called "honor killing" told cops God would look out for him, as he confessed to the grisly strangulation, authorities said yesterday. "God will protect me. God is watching," Pakistani immigrant Chaudhry Rashid allegedly confessed to cops. "I strangled my daughter." At a preliminary hearing yesterday, Detective Mike Christian told a judge Rashid copped to killing his daughter on July 6 with a bungee cord because she had filed divorce papers and was having an extramarital affair. Christian said Rashid was found sitting in his driveway smoking a cigarette when cops...

Murder in the Family: Honor Killings in America When she was just 19, Sandeela Kanwal traveled from America to Pakistan for an arranged marriage to a cousin twice her age. Less than six years later, she was dead — strangled — and her father, Chaudhry Rashid, was arrested by police as the suspect for what some have called an "honor killing." After their marriage, Kanwal had lived in the United States apart from her husband, who remained in Pakistan. She was reunited with him in April at her family home in Atlanta, but he moved to Chicago days later, leaving...

When she was just 19, Sandeela Kanwal traveled from America to Pakistan for an arranged marriage to a cousin twice her age. Less than six years later, she was dead — strangled — and her father, Chaudhry Rashid, was arrested by police as the suspect for what some have called an "honor killing." After their marriage, Kanwal had lived in the United States apart from her husband, who remained in Pakistan. She was reunited with him in April at her family home in Atlanta, but he moved to Chicago days later, leaving her alone once again. On July 1, Kanwal...

LAHORE, PAKISTAN (BosNewsLife)-- The body of a Christian teenager has been hauled out of a canal in Pakistan's second largest city Lahore after he was beaten to death there for courting a Muslim girl, BosNewsLife learned Friday, July 18. The 19-year-old boy, whose name was changed into Peter for security reasons, was murdered by the girl's father and two uncles in what they described as an 'honour killing', Christian family members and investigators said. Peter and the 19-year-old girl apparently began their relationship through mobile phone chatting, an increasingly popular way of communicating among youngsters across Asia. Interfaith contacts and...

Contrary to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution headline, he didn’t actually say he was innocent. He said he had done nothing wrong. That’s not the same thing. According to an earlier story on this case, he confessed to killing his daughter, and explained that he had done it to cleanse his family’s honor. When he appeared before the judge, it is unlikely that he changed this story. He just said he didn’t do anything wrong. And by the lights of the Islamic culture from which he comes, which thinks that a father killing a daughter who has sullied his family’s honor is...

A Pakistani man accused of killing his daughter five days after she filed for divorce to end her arranged marriage wept in court Tuesday, telling a Clayton County magistrate he is innocent. "I have done nothing wrong," Chaudhry Rashid told Chief Magistrate Daphne Walker through interpreter Younis Farhat. Farhat said Rashid speaks primarily Urdu and Punjabi. But police say Rashid, 54, used a bungee cord to strangle Sandeela Kanwal, 25, early Sunday morning in the family's Utah Drive home in Jonesboro. Rashid, who is being held without bond, told the judge he wanted to observe his Muslim beliefs in the...

Unassimilated immigrants will destroy this country. I don't mind letting legal immigrants in, but they've got to leave the head cutting and 6th century obscurantism and misogyny at the door. Oh, and learn English while you're at it! Especially if you anticipate that your petty bigotry and overinflated sense of "honor" will land you in front of a judge. (See Video)

A Georgia man appeared in court Monday on charges he killed his own daughter for disgracing his family. Chaudhry Rashid, wearing a red jumpsuit and shackles around his ankles, went before Chief Judge Daphne Walker at the Clayton County Magistrate Court where he was arraigned on a murder charge. The 54-year-old, who is of Pakistani descent, kept his head down as charges were read, and appeared to have difficulty understanding instructions from the judge, possibly the result of a language barrier. His two sons were also in attendance, watching their father from seats in the rear of the courtroom, joined...

When modern society collides with powerful traditions from the Dark Ages, women die: Police: Arranged marriage led father to kill daughter A Clayton County man faces murder charges in the strangling death of his 25-year-old daughter early Sunday over her desire to end an arranged marriage. Chaudhry Rashad, 54, apparently got mad during an argument in which the victim, Sandela Kanwal, told him she wanted out of the marriage, Clayton police officer Timothy Owens said. Authorities were called to their Utah Drive home in Jonesboro just after 3 a.m. Sunday. Kanwal lived with her father when she was not with...

CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. (MyFOX Atlanta) – A Clayton County man was behind bars Sunday, accused of killing his own daughter. Police said the father was angry because he felt his daughter was disgracing the family. Investigators said 54-year-old Chaudhry Rashad was so outraged at his daughter, Sandela Kanwal, and her plans for divorce that he killed her after a heated argument at the family's home. Investigators said Rashad confessed to strangling the 25-year-old woman.

A Clayton County man faces murder charges in the strangling death of his 25-year-old daughter early Sunday over her desire to end an arranged marriage. Chaudhry Rashad, 54, apparently got mad during an argument in which the victim, Sandela Kanwal, told him she wanted out of the marriage, Clayton police officer Timothy Owens said. Authorities were called to their Utah Drive home in Jonesboro just after 3 a.m. Sunday. Kanwal lived with her father when she was not with her husband, who is in Chicago, Owens said. She hadn't seen the husband in three months, he said. Both Rashad and...

A Danish mother was shot by her brother-in-law in Pakistan in a so-called 'honour killing'; Danish authorities are powerless to press charges A Danish-born woman, with Pakistani roots, was shot and killed by her brother-in-law 12 days ago in a Pakistani village. According to Berlingske Tidende newspaper, who have seen Pakistani police reports into the killing, the woman was killed by the man for not following his orders. He and three other in-laws are in police custody in Pakistan. The 31-year-old woman had been living with her husband's family in the village of Kharian for three years. The husband came...

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. — The brother of a Mississauga, Ont., teenager who was strangled to death in her home has been charged with first-degree murder. Aqsa Parvez was 16 when she was strangled to death in December 2007 during what friends said was a family dispute over her reluctance to wear a hijab. Her father, 57-year-old Muhammed Parvez, was charged with first-degree murder soon after his arrest that month. Sixteen-year-old Aqsa Parvez died in December. Her brother Waqas Parvez, 27, was charged with first-degree murder as well following his arrest on Thursday.

On New Year's Day, Patricia Said stood at the door of a small house in a Hispanic neighborhood of Lewisville, pleading with her daughter Amina to come home. The girl cried and clung to her boyfriend, Eddie, a college student who lived in the house with his mother and sister. For a week, Amina, an 18-year-old senior at Lewisville High School, had been living a nightmare. Her father, Yaser Said, had pulled a gun on Christmas Eve and threatened to kill her because of her relationship with Eddie.

Five weeks ago Leila Hussein told The Observer the chilling story of how her husband had killed their 17-year-old daughter over her friendship with a British soldier in Basra. Now Leila, who had been in hiding, has been murdered - gunned down in cold blood. Leila Hussein lived her last few weeks in terror. Moving constantly from safe house to safe house, she dared to stay no longer than four days at each. It was the price she was forced to pay after denouncing and divorcing her husband - the man she witnessed suffocate, stamp on, then stab their young...

A young female form lying crumpled on a sidewalk. Blood flowing from multiple stab wounds. Police cars. Ambulances. Flashing lights. Emergency personnel working frantically to save an innocent life that had barely begun. It is a scene that is becoming all too common in Western Europe with its growing Muslim population, as the northern German city of Hamburg experienced in May yet another horrifying honor murder of a young female.

Medics in Iraqi Kurdistan said on Saturday that they had seen a surge in violence against women in May, with both so-called "honour" killings and female suicides on the increase. "At least 14 women died in the first 10 days of May alone," a doctor told AFP in the region's second largest city of Sulaimaniyah. "Seven of them took their own lives, the other seven were murdered in still unexplained circumstances" -- apparently the victims of "honour" killings. "Over the same period, we recorded 11 attempted self-immolations. These women were so desperate they set fire to themselves," the doctor added,...

Cairo, May 25 (DPA) An Egyptian farmer who suspected his 16-year-old daughter was having an affair hanged her and then beheaded her body in the southern province of Bani Soueif, it was reported Sunday. The local daily Al-Akhbar said Abdel-Samad, 46, turned himself to the police after the killing. It said a police investigation showed the father suspected his daughter of having an affair. So-called honour killings are not unusual in Egypt and other countries of the Middle East, where families murder female members for having brought 'shame' on their name. Such killings often involve a female member refusing an...

A 23-year-old Hamburg man suspected of stabbing his sister to death in an honour killing last week had already been prosecuted for assaulting her and others, prosecutors confirmed on Monday. The man was sentenced in March on an assault charge to one year and five months without possibility of probation, the Hamburg prosecutor's office told German press agency DDP on Monday, confirming media reports. The man had requested his March sentence be deferred, prosecutors said. He was notified in writing on Wednesday - a day before the stabbing - that the request had been rejected. Police were also investigating earlier...

New Delhi: A man strangled his pregnant daughter and her lover and put their bodies on display to an applauding village in Haryana on Friday. Twenty-seven-year-old Jasdev Singh and his childhood sweetheart Sunita, who was six-months pregnant, belonged to Karnal village — an area dominated by the Jat community — which considers people from the same village as siblings. The two of them secretly continued their affair even after Sunita was married. Last year, Sunita eloped with Jasdev. However, when Sunita's family finally found them and got to know that she was pregnant, they beat up the couple and strangled...

An Austrian man who killed five members of his family with an axe on Tuesday reportedly planned the killings for weeks. 39-year-old Reinhard Steinbauer showed no emotion when he walked into a police station and confessed to killing first his wife and daughter, and later his parents and father-in-law, with an axe he bought for that purpose. Steinbauer described how he decided Tuesday was “a good time” for the killings after having purchased the axe on Saturday and celebrating the Pentecost holiday with his family on Monday. Police found the bodies of his 42-year-old wife Barbara and 7-year-old daughter Natalie...

A Jordanian judicial official says the country's state prosecutor has charged a man with premeditated murder who is suspected of drowning his 22-year-old sister for having an extramarital affair. The official says the unidentified woman's brother beat her with the help of his family Saturday and then took her to the Dead Sea, where he drowned her. The official says the state prosecutor also charged the woman's parents and another brother Monday with assisting in the murder by knowing about it and for beating the woman before she died. He says they carried out their suspected actions after seeing an...

12-year-old murdered in the name of 'honour' A Deadly calm prevails in the tiny village of Garhia, 15 kilometres off Bulandshahr in the rural belt of western Uttar Pradesh. Through the quiet of the village, dominated by the Lodha Rajputa community, a backward caste, one can only hear whispers — that of how a father beat his 12-year-old daughter to death to “save his honour”. The victim’s grandmother, Natho (60), told Newsline that her sons killed Mamta after they found a boy, Pintu (14), her schoolmate, in her room late on Friday night. Father Jagdish Singh and his brother Soni...

AMMAN - The Jordanian authorities are questioning a 22-year- old man, who allegedly killed his pregnant married sister for reasons related to family honour, the Jordan Times reported Friday, quoting official sources. The 20-year-old victim, who was not identified by officials, received three fatal bullets to the side of her head, reportedly by her brother, at her in-law's house in western Amman Wednesday night. The suspect immediately headed to the nearest police station and turned himself in, handing over the gun he used to shoot his sibling to officers on duty. "The suspect told police he had just killed his...

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city's Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death. Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. 'They are men and know what honour is,' he said. Rand, who was studying...

Two weeks ago, The Observer revealed how 17-year-old student Rand Abdel-Qader was beaten to death by her father after becoming infatuated with a British soldier in Basra. In this remarkable interview, Abdel-Qader Ali explains why he is unrepentant - and how police backed his actions. Afif Sarhan in Basra and Caroline Davies report * Afif Sarhan in Basra and Caroline Davies * The Observer, * Sunday May 11 2008 For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. 'If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her...

By Victoria Ward April 28, 2008 An Iraqi who murdered his teenage daughter for falling in love with a British soldier will not face charges. Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, had grown close to a blond infantryman known only as Paul in Basra. When her father Ali Abdel-Qader found out, he went berserk, beating her and stamping on her throat in an "honour killing". But astonishingly Ali - who has Basra government and police links - was released after being held for two hours. Sgt Ali Jabbar said: "Not much can be done when we have an honour killing. You are in...

MORTALLY wounded and bleeding profusely, Pela Atroshi covered her head with her hands, pleading "please don't shoot me, please don't shoot me". As her sister and her mother screamed, her uncle Rezkar Atroshi raised his gun and killed her. The family's honour had been cleansed. Rezkar had already shot Pela twice in the back in the upstairs room. Helped downstairs by her mother and her younger sister, the 19-year-old Kurdish Swede was confronted by four resolute men - her father and his three brothers. The men pulled the women apart. Her youngest uncle then finished the job, shooting Pela in...

A teenage Iraqi girl who fell in love with a British soldier when he was in Basra was murdered by her father in an "honour killing", it was revealed today. Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, was suffocated and then hacked at with a knife after her family discovered she was friends with the 22-year-old soldier who she knew only as Paul. The pair first met when Rand was working on an aid project for displaced families but it is thought the soldier is unaware of the girl's fate. She was stamped on, suffocated and stabbed - leaving her with puncture wounds all...

A YEMENI court has granted a divorce to an eight-year-old girl whose unemployed father forced her into an arranged marriage. "I am happy that I am divorced now. I will be able to go back to school,'' Nojud Mohammed Ali said, after a public hearing in Sanaa's court of first instance. Her former husband, 28-year-old Faez Ali Thameur, said he married the child "with her consent and that of her parents'' but that he did not object to her divorce petition. In response to a question from Judge Mohammed al-Qadhi, he acknowledged that the "marriage was consummated, but I did...

Afghanistan to Ask NATO for Bigger Army Afghan officials will go to the NATO summit in Romania Thursday with a request: pay to increase our national Army by 40 percent. A bigger Army, Afghan officials argue, will allow the US and other coalition members to scale back in the coming years. This appeal comes amid pleas from the US and Canada for other NATO members to commit more to the Afghanistan mission, which many analysts say has floundered over the past year for lack of resources and a coherent strategy. France is expected to contribute another 1,000 forces and...

Cambridge University has been given £8 million by a Saudi Arabian prince to establish an Islamic studies centre. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, ranked in the top 20 richest men in the world, with a fortune of about £10 billion, has donated the cash to the university to fund a centre in his name for the study of the role of Islam in the Middle East and globally. The gift has been recommended by the university's general board and is expected to be announced in June. advertisement The grandson of King Ibn Saud and nephew of King Abudllah, the prince counts...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBkDdsx8T-4

Texas-born Patricia (“Tissie) Said, formerly of the Owens family, is the mother who lured her two teenage daughters, Sarah and Amina, to their deaths at the hands of their own father this past New Years Day in Dallas. How can a mother do such a thing? Even if her own life was threatened, even if her husband Yasser had literally held a gun to her head and told her to trick her daughters into returning, isn’t a mother supposed to sacrifice herself for her children? Or at least to protect them? What can explain such a perversion of maternal instinct...

An Israeli-Arab family, to be specific. Motive: His sister was divorced, and yet was “befriending men.” Police investigators noted that the attempted murder was meticulously planned. The youth had informed his family members that he was going to murder his sister early Tuesday morning, and then set off to do just that. He headed to the entrance of the village in a vehicle which he had borrowed from his brother, and awaited his sister’s arrival.The youth then shot his sister, who was startled to see him and proceeded to kick her repeatedly in order to ensure that she was no...

AMMAN, MARCH 10 - The Jordanian citizen who first killed his sister and her alleged lover with an automatic rifle and then surrendered to the police faces a maximum sentence of one year in prison. The man explained that he committed the crime to avenge the family honour. The double honour killing, the fourth since the beginning of the year, took place last Friday but it was reported to ANSA only today by Jordanian judicial sources. The crime was committed in Azraq (120km east of Amman). The young victim (23 years old), whose identity was not disclosed, was hit by...

t was as swift and brutal an honor murder as any among the dozens committed in Germany over the years but with two noticeable differences. First hit with baseball bats over the head by two Muslim men, the victim fell to the ground and was then viciously kicked to death. However, instead of the usual, crumpled form of a Muslim female lying lifeless before her attackers, who were out to restore their twisted notion of “honor”, the unfortunate victim this time round was male – and German.

LAHORE: A mother of six was shot dead by her brother in Shahdara Town police precinct on Sunday. The Shahdara Town police duty officer said Yasmeen (33), a resident of Rasul Park was married to Imtiaz. The police said Yasmeen’s brother Amanat, suspected that she had developed “illicit relations” with some men. He said Amanat had threatened her with dire consequences. Late on Saturday night, Amanat saw Yasmeen along with a stranger in front of her house and they exchanged harsh words. Amanat pulled out his gun and fired at Yasmeen, killing her on the spot. Amanat fled from the...