Wherever would Americans get pessimistic ideas about Islam? From Muslims’ daily terrorist attacks, perhaps?
The precipitating action of the murder was apparently her filing for divorce, and a few days later Muzzamil Hassan met her at their TV station with two new hunting knives and stabbed her dozens of times before dismembering her body in a way that would prevent her entrance to paradise. A Muslim wives is supposed to be an obedient doormat under the husband, not an independent individual.
It’s been nearly two years since the heinous murder, and the trial has finally started. Hassan is being tried for second-degree murder, which seems an insufficient charge given his obvious planning of the crime. Are District Attorneys afraid of maximum prosecution of Muslim criminals because they fear personal threats from other hostile sons of Allah? Remember that a plea deal was offered to the Arizona honor killer Faleh Almaleki, although it didn’t work out.
Hassan is claiming he was a battered spouse, which is ridiculous on the face, since he is a rather large man. The crime was a standard-issue Islamic honor killing with extra gore added. I take Hassan’s characterization of being battered spouse as his statement of disrespect to American values of gender equality.
The case is yet another example of why Muslim immigration is a big mistake for our country, because our Western values are antithetical to those of Islam. The culture of honor killing does not enrich America.
Hassan’s son describes moments before stepmother’s death, Buffalo News, January 19, 2011As he waited in a minivan for his stepmother on the evening of Feb. 12, 2009, outside the Bridges television station on Thorn Road in Orchard Park, Michael Shazad Hassan began to fear that something terrible had happened.
Within minutes, he learned that his worst fears had been realized.
Michael Hassan, now 19, was the key prosecution witness this morning in the murder trial of his father, Muzzammil ”Mo” Hassan, who stands accused of killing his estranged wife, Aasiya Zubair Hassan.
Hassan, 46, a former local bank executive who founded the Bridges cable television station with Aasiya Hassan, his third wife, has been jailed since he surrendered at Orchard Park police headquarters within an hour or so of the murder. According to testimony Tuesday and this morning, authorities believe Hassan stabbed and beheaded his wife while three of his children sat in a minivan in the parking lot outside.
Under questioning from prosecutor Paul E. Bonanno, Michael Hassan told Erie County Judge Thomas P. Franczyk and a 12-person jury that he was with his stepmother when she drove to the cable television station to drop off a bag of clothing for Mo Hassan, just six days after she began divorce proceedings and obtained court orders barring Hassan from harassing her.
Michael Hassan, a sophomore computer science major at the University at Buffalo, said he was unaware that his father was inside the station when his stepmother went in. As the time passed, he said he began to get more nervous.
”I’m beginning to fear for Aasiya,” he testified.
As he and Aasiya’s two younger children waited in a minivan outside, he heard a loud screech, but thought it was a car on the road. He looked up from a game he was playing on his cell phone, but saw nothing.
A few minutes later, he said he saw two lights go on and off and saw his father emerge from the building. His father then drove up in his Mercedes, handed Michael Hassan an M&T Bank envelope with cash in it, and left.
He told the jury the luxury car was not parked in the station’s lot when his stepmother drove him to deliver the bag of clothing for him. He said he was shocked to find his father walk out of the office alone moments later.
Michael Hassan said he grew worried and tried to call his stepmother. He said he tried to get into the station but the door was locked. He peered into two windows, he said, but it was dark. His younger brother and sister, Aasiya’s children, sat in car seats in the back of the minivan.
When the police arrived, he said, he knew something had gone terribly wrong.
”I’m assuming at that point that Aasiya had been killed,” Michael Hassan said.
Michael Hassan, who was 17 at the time, described how his father had periodically assaulted Aasiya Hassan as well as himself and his sister, Sonia, now 21, both born of his first marriage to the now Janice Haller.
He told the jury that after his father married Aasiya in 2000, he and his sister developed close relations with her and the younger brother and sister she gave birth to.
After years of Hassan physically assaulting Aasiya, Michael Hassan told the jury he was ”surprised and pleased” when she told him on Feb. 5, 2009 that the next day she would be serving divorce papers on Hassan.
He testified that a day later, his father, having been served with the divorce papers, tried to force his way into the family’s home on Big Tree Road in Orchard Park. Police had to be called and took him away in handcuffs.
Michael Hassan said he no longer talks to his father.
”I don’t want to talk to him,” he said. ”I don’t want to have anything to do with him.”
Earlier today, the second day of the trial, the jury heard testimony about frequent Orchard Park police calls to the Hassan home and about how Hassan was served with his estranged wife’s divorce papers on Feb. 6, 2009 after he moved from the family home.
Remember the Muslim immigrant in Buffalo who beheaded his insufficiently submissive wife? The couple, Muzzammil and Aasiya Hassan, had founded an Islamo-informative television station (
