Mother of Iraqi Honor Killing Victim is Herself Killed After Divorcing the Murderer

It was hard to imagine anything more disturbing than the story that was posted a couple weeks ago about Rand, a 17-year-old girl, was killed by her father (and her brothers) for simply falling in love with a young British soldier. While still a virgin, her father Abdel-Qader Ali, 46, still strangled her after she confided her feeling of Paul to a friend. Now her mother, Leila, who went public with the murder and divorced the father, has been gunned down while trying to flee to Jordon.

Leila was the one who called on her sons to help their sister when her husband suddenly began to strangle her in an Islamic honor killing. Her sons came into the room, but promptly joined their father in killing their sister. For the prior story, click here. Leila could not remain quiet and told Observer about the killing. However, the U.S. supported police simply congratulated the father and let him go. Leila then divorced him. This was met with calls for her own killing. She lived in hiding — moving from safe house to safe house. She was finally ready to flee to Jordon and was getting into a taxi when she was gunned down.

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 daughter Rand in a brutal ‘honour’ killing for which he has shown no remorse. She was 41.

It took great courage and maternal strength to do what she did. She knew that the men in the area would try to kill her. She told The Observer in April: “No man can accept being left by a woman in Iraq. But I would prefer to be killed than sleep in the same bed as a man who was able to do what he did to his own daughter.”

Her sons in the meantime proved to be perfect little monsters like their father. Hassan, 23, and Haydar, 21, disowned her.

Even at the hospital when Leila laid dying, hospital staff talked openly how she was justly punished for
“defending her daughter’s mistakes and that her death was God’s punishment.”

The police insist that she may have been killed because she was with advocate from a women’s shelter — a common target for killings. That would be the hopeful account in Iraq. She was killed not for divorcing her husband but for being with women activists.

Hassan, one of the sons, expressed no immediate interest in going to either the funeral or seeing his mother’s grave. He only wanted to defend his father. Abdel-Qader Ali continues to work as government official in the U.S. backed government — just one more dividend in our was in Iraq.

For the latest story, click here.