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Muslim murdered ‘Westernised’ daughter

Press Association, UK
Sep. 29, 2003
www.express.co.uk

ReligionNewsBlog.com • Monday September 29, 2003

A strict Kurdish Muslim cut his daughter’s throat because she had become too Westernised, the Old Bailey was told.

Abdalla Yones, 48, then tried to take his own life and later pleaded for an English court to pass the death sentence on him for his “appalling” crime.

He was jailed for life after admitting murdering his 16-year-old daughter Heshu – who he had described as “the jewel in his crown”.

Popular and fun-loving, Heshu had planned to run away from home after starting a relationship with an 18-year-old Lebanese Christian boy.

“This is, on any view, a tragic story arising out of irreconcilable cultural differences between traditional Kurdish values and the values of western society,” said Judge Neil Denison, as he sentenced Yones.

Yones, a political refugee who had fled the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq 10 years ago, had cut his own throat and jumped from a third floor balcony after frenziedly attacking Heshu at their home in Acton, west London, on October 12 last year.

His counsel, Icah Peart QC, said that Yones now desired to die. “He has asked me to ask you to pass a sentence of execution. I have made it clear that your Lordship does not have that power.”

Judge Denison told Yones “It is plain you strongly and genuinely disapproved of the lifestyle in this country of your daughter and the fact that was affecting her schoolwork.

“But having said that, the killing and the manner of it was, as you have recognised, an appalling act. That is why immediately after and then again last month, you tried to take your own life. I accept that is still your intention.

“But there is only one sentence that the law allows me to pass where the crime is murder and that is the sentence I do pass – life.”