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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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May 21st,
2007 - Four Arrested in Iraq ‘Honor Killing’ |
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Four Arrested in Iraq ‘Honor
Killing’ Cable Networks News May 21, 2007 Baghdad, Iraq - Authorities
in northern Iraq have arrested four people in connection with the "honor
killing" last month of a Kurdish teen - a startling, morbid pummeling
caught on a mobile phone video camera and broadcast around the world. The case highlights the
tragedy and brutality of honor killings - where family members kill
relatives, almost always female, because they feel the relatives' actions
have shamed the family. In this case, Dua Khalil, a
17-year-old Kurdish girl whose religion is Yazidi, was dragged into a crowd
in a headlock with police looking on and kicked, beaten and stoned to death
last month. Authorities believe she was
killed for being seen with a Sunni Muslim man. She had not married him or
converted, but her attackers believed she had, a top official in Nineveh
province said. The Yazidis, who observe an ancient Middle Eastern religion,
look down on mixing with people of another faith. Each year, dozens of honor
killings are reported in Iraq and thousands are reported worldwide, said the
United Nations. The practice has been condemned around the world by
governments and human rights groups. A yearly vigil protesting honor killings
is held in London, England. Two of the four arrested are
members of the victim's family, police in Nineveh province said Thursday.
Four others, including a cousin thought to have instigated the killing, are
being sought. The killing is said to have
spurred the killings of about two dozen Yazidi men by Sunni Muslims in the
Mosul area two weeks later. Attackers affiliated with al Qaeda pulled 24
Yazidi men out of a bus and slaughtered them, a provincial official said. The violence ratcheted up
tensions between Yazids and Muslims in Bashiqa, the victim's hometown, a
largely Yazidi city in Nineveh province. Provincial officials don't
think much could have been done to stop the honor killing, but at least three
officers are being investigated and could be fired. "The climate, the religious
and social climate is such that people can do that in daylight and that
authorities do not intervene," said the spokeswoman for the Organization
of Womens' Freedom in Iraq, Houzan Mahmoud. Also, the top police
official in Bashiqa is being replaced. From CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq
and Brian Todd. External link: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/18/iraq.honorkilling/index.html |