{"id":9620,"date":"2014-06-25T13:06:23","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T13:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/?p=9620"},"modified":"2020-10-26T03:51:21","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T03:51:21","slug":"husband-of-slain-iraqi-woman-gets-26-years-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/husband-of-slain-iraqi-woman-gets-26-years-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Husband of slain Iraqi woman gets 26 years to life"},"content":{"rendered":"

EL CAJON, California (AP) \u2014 A California judge sentenced an Iraqi immigrant Monday to 26 years-to-life in prison for his wife’s fatal beating \u2014 an attack that initially drew international condemnation when authorities believed it was a hate crime.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Kassim Alhimidi, 50, entered the courtroom bound and surrounded by deputies because of his previous outbursts that repeatedly disrupted his emotional trial in San Diego County Superior Court.<\/p>\n

On Monday, he yelled out in English “I swear I am not guilty!” and then shouted in Arabic to his son, before the judge ordered the defendant to be briefly removed from courtroom.<\/p>\n

When Alhimidi returned minutes later, he blew kisses to his 17-year-old son, Mohammed, and then sobbed as the teen told the court: “I just basically lost both my parents.”<\/p>\n

The couple’s oldest daughter, Fatima, found Shaima Alawadi, 32, in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor of their home in 2012 in El Cajon, a San Diego suburb that is home to the second-largest Iraqi population in the United States.<\/p>\n

She died at a hospital two days later after suffering multiple fractures to her skull.<\/p>\n

Investigators initially believed the killing was a hate crime because of a note found after the beating near the devout Muslim mother of five who wore a hijab. It read: “This is my country, go back to yours, you terrorist.”<\/p>\n

The victim and her Shiite Muslim family left Iraq in the early 1990s after a failed Shiite uprising, living in Saudi Arabian refugee camps before coming to the United States.<\/p>\n

The slaying was condemned by Muslim community leaders in the United States and Iraq before laboratory tests determined the note was a photocopy of one found earlier outside the home, indicating it was planted.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said Alhimidi lied to police about the state of his marriage and hid the fact that his wife was seeking a divorce and planned to move to Texas. His wife’s relative also overheard Alhimidi apologize to his wife as she lay dying in a hospital, according to the prosecution.<\/p>\n

Alhimidi’s daughter, Fatima, did not attend the sentencing but sent a statement that was read in court in which she told her father: “What I saw scarred me for life.”<\/p>\n

She added: “It disgusts me that you made this look like a hate crime.”<\/p>\n

The 18-year-old is now taking care of her two younger sisters in El Cajon, while the two sons are living in Texas, her brother, Mohammed, said after the hearing.<\/p>\n

After being sentenced, Alhimidi yelled out that he would prefer to be sentenced to death and donate his organs.<\/p>\n

Alhimidi’s outbursts stopped the proceedings several times during his trial. He shook his head and wagged his finger as jurors delivered the guilty verdict in April.<\/p>\n

His sons shouted in his defense, with one yelling obscenities before several deputies wrestled him out of the courtroom.<\/p>\n

His son, Mohammed, who tattooed a drawing of a woman in a hijab on his arm in honor of his mother, told reporters Monday that he struggled at the time to believe his father had killed his mother.<\/p>\n

Mohammed told the court he wakes up at night thinking of her and breaks down when he remembers “the man I looked up to all my life is the reason why she is gone.”<\/p>\n

Defense lawyers said there was no forensic evidence against Alhimidi and that he loved his wife and was not a violent man. They say he also returned from Iraq after burying his wife there when he could have stayed in his homeland to avoid prosecution.<\/p>\n

Alhimidi will have to serve 26 years actual time before he is eligible for a parole hearing, but he will get credit for time already served since his November 2012 arrest.<\/p>\n

Source: Yahoo News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EL CAJON, California (AP) \u2014 A California judge sentenced an Iraqi immigrant Monday to 26 years-to-life in prison for his wife’s fatal beating \u2014 an attack that initially drew international condemnation when authorities believed it was a hate crime. Kassim Alhimidi, 50, entered the courtroom bound and surrounded by deputies because of his previous outbursts …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-sayyed-abdulmalik"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9622,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9620\/revisions\/9622"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}