Murder in the Name of Honor

by Rana Husseini

  Rand Abdel-Qader, a nineteen-year-old English student at Basra University, was working as a volunteer helping displaced families when she met an English soldier, Paul. He was distributing water. Although their friendship involved just brief, snatched conversations over four months, Rand had confided her romantic feelings for Paul to her best friend, Zeinab.

  On 16 March 2008, Rand was stamped on, suffocated and stabbed by her father, as her two older brothers, Hassan (aged twenty-three) and Haydar (aged twenty-one), held her down while their mother begged them to stop. Her father, Abdel-Qader Ali, claimed the ‘honour killing’ was supported by local police, and said his only regret was that he had not killed his daughter at birth.

  Abdel-Qader, a forty-six-year-old government employee, was released from police custody after just two hours, and claims officers congratulated him on what he had done. ‘They are men and know what honour is,’ he said. Speaking at his home in Basra’s Al-Fursi district, he told the Observer:

  Death was the least she deserved, I don’t regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion.

  I don’t have a daughter now, and I prefer to say that I never had one. That girl humiliated me in front of my family and friends. Speaking with a foreign soldier, she lost what is the most precious thing for any woman.

  People from western countries might be shocked, but our girls are not like their daughters that can sleep with any man they want and sometimes even get pregnant without marrying. Our girls should respect their religion, their family and their bodies. I have only two boys now. That girl was a mistake in my life. I know God is blessing me for what I did.36

  Rand’s mother Leila divorced her husband after the killing and was forced into hiding for fear of retribution. He had beaten her badly before she escaped, breaking her arm. Leaving him was a courageous move. Few women in Iraq would contemplate such a step. She explained, ‘They cannot accept me leaving him. When I first left I went to a cousin’s home, but every day they were delivering notes to my door saying I was a prostitute and deserved the same death as Rand. She was killed by animals. Every night when I go to bed I remember the face of Rand calling for help while her father and brothers ended her life.’

  The forty-one-year-old, who nicknamed her daughter Rose because of her beauty as a baby, said, ‘Now, my lovely Rose is in her grave. But God will make her father pay, either in this world ... or in the world after.’

  Leila planned to escape to Amman in Jordan where she would carry on the fight alongside other activists like myself. On the morning of 17 May 2008, two months after her daughter’s death, Leila set off to meet ‘a contact’ who was to help her travel to Amman, where she would be taken in by an Iraqi family. She was anxious but happy to leave Iraq. She was also desperately tired; since her daughter’s death she hadn’t been sleeping well and told one of the women who gave her shelter that she had terrible nightmares. She had a recurring dream where she was being strangled and suffocated – like her daughter. That morning, because she couldn’t sleep, she had risen early and prepared breakfast for her helper, cleaned her house and even baked a cake.

  Leila had her entire worldly possessions with her in one small bag as she walked fifty metres up the street to get a taxi. Suddenly, a car skidded to a halt beside her and a series of gunshots rang out. The attack, said by witnesses to have been carried out by three men, was over in moments. Leila was hit by three bullets. She died later in hospital.

  Police said the incident was a sectarian attack and that there was nothing to link Leila’s death to her family. ‘Her ex-husband was not in Basra when it happened. We found out he was visiting relatives in Nassiriya with his two sons,’ said Hassan Alaa, a senior officer at the local police station in Basra. ‘We believe the target was the women activists, rather than Mrs Hussein, and that she was unlucky to be in that place at that time.’

  Since February 2006, two other activists from the same women’s organization have been killed in the city. One of them was reportedly raped before being shot. The other, the only man working for this NGO and a father of five who was responsible for the organization’s finances, was shot in January 2008. Despite this it seems as though Leila was deliberately targeted; the killers chose her over any activist. Since the attack, the NGO that helped Leila has stopped its work in Basra.

  Leila was an orphan, raised by an uncle who died in the Shia uprising against Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s. Sixty-eight-year-old Hamida Alaa, a friend of the uncle, said, ‘The poor woman was killed and now her name and history is buried with her. No one wants to speak about it. She is just one more woman killed in our country who has already been forgotten by the local society.’

  To me, Leila is a hero, a strong woman who should have survived. The best we can do for her is honour her courage and tell her story and work towards change and fight for a better life for Iraqi women – no matter how hard it might be.

  Iran

  Iran, one of the more populous countries in which honour killings are thought to be frequent, does not report on incidents. There is a clear legal precedent for the phenomenon. Article 220 of the Iranian Criminal Code states: ‘If a father – or his male ancestors – kill their children, they will not be prosecuted for murder.’ Likewise, Article 1179 of the Civil Code states: ‘Parents have the right to punish their children within the limits prescribed by law.’

  Incidents are generally concealed from the independent press. For example, in 2003 a truck driver split his niece’s head open with a butcher’s knife in broad daylight after seeing her walking with a man he did not know, according to an Agence France Press report. He was immediately arrested. No other details were available. The government has the co-operation of the state-owned Iranian News Agency (IRNA) and controls the information that the police provide.

  Stoning for adultery remains a common practice in Iran. In December 2002 Ayatollah Shahroudi, Head of the Iranian Judiciary, declared a suspension of stoning in Iran. Nevertheless, stoning sentences continue to be handed down as no change has been made to the Iranian Penal Code to prohibit them as of 2007, according to the US organization Equality Now.

  One recent case reported by CNN on 13 January 2009 involved two men who were reportedly stoned to death for adultery and murder in the north-eastern city of Mashhad in December.

  ‘The majority of those sentenced to death by stoning are women. Women are not treated equally with men under the law and by courts, and they are also particularly vulnerable to unfair trials because their higher illiteracy rate makes them more likely to sign confessions to crimes they did not commit,’ CNN quoted Amnesty in its report.

  You can find out more about the practice of stoning in Iran on the CNN website.

  Another case, reported by The Nation in February 2006, involved a man and a woman who were stoned in Mashhad. The government eventually confirmed the horrific event the following year, which took place in the village of Aghche-kand.

  A fourteen-year-old girl was stoned to death by her father in Zahedan on 14 February 2008 for having a relationship with a boy. The father said he and his friend took his daughter to a mountain, stoned her to death and fired four bullets at her. Both men were arrested, according to the Iran Human Rights website.

  A newspaper report quoted the father as saying, ‘When we were taking Somayeh to the mountains, she was scared but still didn’t know what she was expecting. Upon arrival at the scheduled place, I threw Somayeh on the ground and started the stoning. She was screaming and begging for her life, but I had to save my honour and didn’t have any other choice than killing her.’

  In 2004, sixteen-year-old Atefeh Sahaaleh Rajabi was hanged in public in the town of Neka, after being convicted of ‘immoral’ acts.

  The UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women reported after a visit to Iran in 2005 that two hundred of the 397 women then detained in Evin prison had received a death sentence for moral or s
exual offences such as adultery, which she attributed to ‘the gender biases in the attitudinal and institutional structure of the country’.

  There is little reason to expect change any time soon. In September 2008, four women in Iran were sentenced to six months behind bars for campaigning for women’s rights. They were accused of ‘spreading propaganda’, specifically for taking part in the Million Signatures Campaign for equal rights for women. An estimated fifty women have been detained since the petition began. One of those sentenced, Parvin Ardalan, a human rights activist and journalist, had been awarded the Olof Palme Prize this year, but her passport was seized at the airport and she was unable to travel to collect the award.37

  In July 2008, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) forced significant alterations to be made to a forthcoming Hollywood film, Crossing Over, which stars Sean Penn and Harrison Ford. The plot featured an honour killing in an Iranian family living in the USA. The NIAC wrote to the film’s producers stating that if ‘significant changes’ were not made, then the film would ‘generate serious backlash against the Iranian American community’.

  The NIAC later submitted its analysis and suggestions to the production team, who changed elements of the script and even re-shot certain scenes. The final product, the film’s director says, does not include any reference to ‘family honour’ and does not depict an honour killing. ‘Honour killings are accepted in some Middle Eastern cultures but not accepted in Iranian culture,’ NIAC president Trita Parsi said.

  On 14 August 2008, in a village called Kani Dinar in the Mariwan region of Iran, a man stabbed his eighteen-year-old daughter, Fereshteh Nejati, and slit her throat, almost severing her head in the street because she wanted to divorce her husband.

  Fereshteh had been forced into a marriage when she was fourteen years old.

  She fled to her uncle’s house to seek refuge after her father threatened to kill her but her father forced her uncle to hand her over and murdered her on the same day.

  He was not arrested.

  A few days later, more than two thousand people in Mariwan came to the street where she had been murdered and held a demonstration against so-called honour killings. This was one of the first such demonstrations held in Iran. The angry crowd demanded that her father be arrested and face trial. They also asked for a change in the legislation of Iran to protect women like Fereshteh from crimes of honour. They went to the hospital and collected Fereshteh’s body and buried her in an emotional ceremony in her home town.38

  Syria

  It is estimated that between two and three hundred honour killings take place in Syria each year. Syrian law is lenient towards a man who kills or injures his female relative if he catches her in ‘illegitimate sexual acts with another’ or in a ‘suspicious state with another’. Most receive little or no attention, but one murder that has sparked an outcry for change in Syria is that of sixteen-year-old Zahra Ezzo in 2007.

  Zahra’s father was having an extramarital affair. If the clan had discovered this, there was a good chance her father and his mistress would have been killed. A young man, supposedly a ‘friend’ of Zahra’s father, took a liking to the then fifteen-year-old, and threatened to tell the clan unless she ran away with him.

  Feeling she had no choice in the matter, Zahra agreed, but her family pursued them when they found out. Luckily, the police captured them first, and put the man in jail, where he faced a possible fifteen-year prison sentence for the kidnap and rape of a minor.

  Zahra was sent to a shelter where she stayed for nine months. During that time, Zahra’s family tried three times to regain custody of her, but the shelter refused, saying the family could not guarantee Zahra’s safety.

  The family then asked Zahra’s cousin Fawaz to marry her, which, according to tradition, would restore the family’s honour. Fawaz agreed to marry her first out of chivalry, then because he fell in love with her. He had no idea what her family were planning.

  Once her marriage was formalized, her father signed a sworn statement guaranteeing that neither he nor anyone in the family would harm his daughter. The newlyweds moved into an apartment one floor below Fawaz’s new in-laws in Damascus. A month later, her brother came to visit. On the morning of his third day with them, after Zahra’s husband had gone to work, Fayez stabbed his sister to death. The murder created a rare burst of very open outrage among ordinary people, prompting Syria’s Grand Mufti, Ahmad Hassoun, to condemn her murder and to call for better protection of girls at risk and for legal reforms. President Bashar al-Assad promised to find a solution.39

  One of the key questions in this case has been whether the brother should go on trial for premeditated murder – as the family had clearly planned it for months – or as someone who had no choice because the clan’s honour was at stake.

  In another case that was reported in Al Hayat newspaper in 2003, a twenty-eight-year-old woman was stabbed to death by her brothers after she started listening to Um Kalthoum (a famous Arab singer known for her love songs). The brothers believed that her musical taste was evidence of an illicit affair, and, acting on their suspicion, killed her and then turned themselves in to the police. Investigations later proved that the victim’s husband had brought the tapes for his wife to listen to while he was away.

  In Syria, Article 548 of the Penal Code states that if a man witnesses a female relative committing an immoral act and then kills her, he should not be prosecuted. Work by Syrian activists to combat these crimes and change attitudes has recently become more visible. A local organization named Syrian Women Observatory launched a nationwide campaign entitled ‘Stop killing women … Stop honour crimes’ in 2006, demanding the abolition of laws that offer leniency to killers. The campaign called on religious leaders and decision-makers to take a stand against these crimes.

  In 2006 the Syrian General Union of Women released the results of a field study on domestic violence in Syria. This comprehensive report indicated that nearly one in every four married Syrian women were beaten by their husbands. More than seventy per cent of women’s abusers were fathers, husbands and brothers, according to the report, published by Ms magazine in 2006.

  Yumun Abu al-Hosn is a founding member of the Association for Women’s Role Development, one of the few NGOs in Syria. The association runs the girls’ shelter where Zahra took refuge in her final months. ‘We may not be able to stop honour killings overnight,’ she told the Christian Science Monitor, ‘but at least if the crime is tried as premeditated murder, then Zahra and others like her will have some dignity in death.’

  Yemen

  Amran, a bustling governorate of Yemen, seventy miles north of the capital, is home to almost 900,000 people. On 30 May 2008, a local resident, twenty-six-year-old Abdullah Saleh al-Kohali, carried his machine gun to the mosque where he hoped to find Belal Qassim al-Kohali, the man who had made his sister pregnant out of wedlock. He later said he planned to avenge the family honour by killing her lover. When Abdullah spotted his target, he opened fire, killing him – but he fired so wildly that he managed to shoot dead ten other worshippers and wounded fifteen more. In June he was sentenced to death by firing squad.40

  It is rare that anyone is tried in Yemen for an honour-related crime. Abdullah’s sentence was so harsh because he shot so many other people in his appalling attempt at revenge. Article 40 of the Personal Status Act No. 20 (1992) mandates a wife’s obedience to her husband, including by restricting her movements outside the marital home, and by requiring her to have sexual intercourse with him. Article 242 of Law No. 12 (1994) says that a man who finds his wife in the act of committing adultery and kills her should receive a maximum of a year in prison or a fine.

  In the rural, tribal areas, there is a definite absence of a functioning legal system, and so murderers go unpunished in all but the most extreme cases. There are very few villages where the judiciary is represented by a court and a prosecutor.

  Around four hundred women are reported to be victims of so-called honour kil
lings each year in Yemen, said Dr Sherifa Zuhur, Professor of Islamic and Regional Studies, during a conference in 2005. It is thought that many of the 1,211 cases of sudden female deaths presented as suicides between 1995 and 2001 are in fact related to honour.

  A Yemeni women’s rights organization conducted a study in the capital, Sanaa, in 2005. They quoted a police officer as saying that the number of honour killings has increased in recent years but the majority of cases are hidden and never even reach police stations.

  Those cases that do come to the attention of the police are usually withdrawn and are rarely registered officially. In one instance, a woman was referred to the police; she’d been suffering from severe abuse and had escaped her family home, telling the officers that she had been imprisoned because she was in love. An officer was quoted as saying he received orders not to register the case. The woman’s family had collected her from the police station and no one knew what had happened to her.

  According to a report that was prepared by Sisters Arab Forum for Human Rights in 2005, most women in Yemen are killed only on the basis of suspicion or for marrying a man against their family’s wishes. Doctors also said that many families hide the real reasons behind their female relatives’ death.

  Lebanon

  Activists report that almost a dozen women die each year in Lebanon as a result of so-called honour crimes. In 2000, Al Raida magazine reported on several incidents, including the case of a nineteen-year-old girl from the Bekaa Valley who was shot by her brother in front of twenty-five men from her clan in 1990.