Prominent New York Muslim Offers Unique Defense For Beheading Spouse
January 28, 2010 by Roberto Santiago
Filed under Islam
Well, she hurt my feelings after all...
“MY WIFE ABUSED ME”
“SO I HAD TO CHOP OFF HER HEAD.”
by Michael Travis of thelastcrusade.org
The founder of an Islam-oriented television station on trial for beheading his wife claims that he mentally abused for many years by his diminutive spouse and had no recourse except to hack off her head.
Muzzammil Hassan’s claim drew a blunt response from District Attorney Frank Sedita after a hearing Friday.
“He chopped her head off,” Sedita said. “He chopped her head off. That’s all I have to say about Mr. Hassan’s apparent defense that he was a battered spouse.”
Mr. Hassan, 45, stands accused of one count of second-degree murder in the February 12 death of his wife – – 37-year-old Aasiya Hassan – – at the offices of Bridges TV, the station the Pakistan-born couple established in 2004 to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims.
During Friday’s hearing, Mr. Hassan fired the attorney who has been representing him for nearly a year and replaced him with a lawyer who promised to provide “a revolutionary defense” at the March trial.
“The spouse was the dominant figure in this relationship,” attorney Frank Bogulski said outside the courtroom. “He was the victim. She was verbally abusive. She had humiliated him.”
Nancy Sanders, a former news director at Bridges TV, remains skeptical of the abuse claim. She notes the stocky Mr. Hassan is over 6 feet tall and “fills a doorway,” while Aasiya was slender and several inches shorter.
“I never ever heard her disparage him in the workplace at all,” Ms. Sanders said. “It just did not seem to be in her nature. She was very gentle.”
Mr. Hassan was served with divorce papers a week before his wife’s decapitated body was found at the offices of their television station in Orchard Park, the Buffalo suburb where the couple lived with their two small children and Muzzammil’s two teenagers from a previous marriage.
The beheading has led the state president of the National Organization for Women, Marcia Pappas, and others to label Aasiya Hassan’s death an “honor killing,” a ritual, which Ms. Pappas says, is rooted in Muslim notions about women’s subordination to men.
Related Reading:
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- Obama Makes Terrorists U.S. Citizens?
- 280 Christians Murdered by Muslims in California
- Coptic Priest Zakaria Botros Speaks Out
- Hasan Was A Victim, Family Members Claim
- Free Speech Under Foreign Assault – by Robert Spencer
- American Student Arrested in Pakistan Has Ties to Radical Mosque
