"Honor Killing" Trial Begins In Phoenix

This is an update on this story.

From Seeing Red AZ:

Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 49, an Iraqi immigrant intentionally drove his vehicle into his 20-year-old daughter, Noor Almaleki and Amal Khalaf her boyfriend’s mother, as the two walked through a parking lot. After running them over, he backed up and ran over them again. Noor was in a coma for two weeks before she died.

This horrific, premeditated 2009 crime in which the Muslim father intentionally killed his own daughter and seriously injured another woman, was filed as a first degree murder case, but apparently not one worthy of the death penalty. FOX news reports opening arguments in the case are scheduled for today.

The father, claiming Noor had disgraced the family, had routinely harassed her for becoming “too Western,” too Americanized, warning her “something bad was going to happen.” It was reported that when she was 17 she refused to enter an arranged marriage in Iraq, enraging her father.

After running over the two women, Almaleki fled to London, where he was located and returned to Phoenix.

Although Almaleki admitted his role in the murder, he pled not guilty. The Arizona Republic reported that a plea deal was considered earlier this month. Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugged writes: Honor killing should be a capital crime. Islamic honor killing is on the rise in the West. These barbaric crimes should be stamped out, not sanctioned. They should be dealt with in the harshest terms. She posts a Gruesome Gallery here.

Instead unemployed trucker Faleh Hassan Almaleki faces life in prison if a jury finds him guilty of this vicious “honor killing“and hit and run of two. No death penalty was sought.

Why?

Incredibly, Almaleki’s public defender, Billy Little, asked the judge to take special precautions to ensure the prosecution wouldn’t wrongly seek the death penalty because Almaleki is a Muslim. Little requested that the court “provide some level of assurance that there is no appearance that a Christian is seeking to execute a Muslim for racial, political, religious or cultural beliefs.”

No American court should tolerate brutal and premeditated murder out of political, religious and cultural considerations. The message to Muslim girls who are threatened by honor killing is that American courts will offer them no refuge.