Muslim Couple On Trial For Strangling Daughter In “Honor Killing” in Germany

There is a deeply disturbing trial unfolding in Germany involving another “honor killing.” Asadullah Khan, 51, strangled his 19-year-old daughter to death for bringing dishonor on his Muslim family after she stopped wearing the Islamic head scarf and continued to see her boyfriend and was then caught shoplifting condoms. The father and mother, Sharzia, 41, then dressed the dead body of Lareeb, put the corpse into a wheelchair to bring it to a car, then drove from Darmstadt to a remote forest where they rolled her down an embankment (she was found the next day). Both are charged and the key witness against them is their daughter Nida. The parents are from Pakistan and Khan speaks little German.

Khan admits strangling Lareeb with his bare hands and Shazia admits that they were angry with her after she stayed away from home for several nights and stopping wearing the headscarf. Shazia showed Khan a letter from the police that she was arrested for shoplifting that in her words “At this point it became clear that there was sexual contact. When I showed the letter to my husband he snapped.” Shazia however testified under oath that she did everything that she could to stop the murder but was not strong enough.

However, Shazia has faced damaging testimony from Lareeb’s 14-year-old sister Nida who said that her parents sent her to stay with a relative that night. That morning around 2am Khan went into Shazia’s bedroom and strangled her to death. Nida said that her mother would take part in physically abusing her sister and agreeing to marry her off in an arranged married in Pakistan: “My mama was not suppressed, she could do what she wanted. She used to hit me with a stick. We were never allowed to talk about her [Lareeb’s] boyfriend. My father used to say my sister should be forcibly married in Pakistan,” she told the court.

Lareeb’s boyfriend Raheel, 25, a student and taxi driver, also testified that the couple would beat Lareeb (who he planned to marry). He said that Shazia would beat her with a stick and once pressed her hand against a hot stove. He also said that Khan previously tried to strangle her.

Asadullah insisted on the stand that “I love my wife and my daughters.”

The account is another chilling insight into the plight of women and girls in some conservative Islamic families. While honor killings remain common in some Islamic nations like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and others, it also occurs in the West. Given the freedoms afforded women in the West, this clash of cultures is more intense and more dangerous for these girls. Shazia is the tragic face of that clash of cultures — a girl who found freedoms denied to her in Pakistan only to have her life taken to preserve her father’s twisted sense of “honor.”

Source: IB Times