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   From: rustneversleeps@crazyhorse.com   
      
   Mother kills raped daughter to restore 'honor'   
      
   By Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson   
   Knight Ridder Newspapers   
   November 17, 2003   
      
   ABU QASH, West Bank Raped by her brothers and impregnated, Rofayda   
   Qaoud refused to commit suicide, her mother recalls, even after she   
   bought the 17-year-old a razor with which to slit her wrists.   
      
   So Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud says she did what she believes any good   
   Palestinian parent would: restored her family's "honor" through   
   murder.   
      
   Armed with a plastic bag, razor and wooden stick, Qaoud entered her   
   sleeping daughter's room last Jan. 27. "Tonight you die, Rofayda," she   
   told the girl, before wrapping the bag tightly around her head. Next,   
   Qaoud sliced Rofayda's wrists, ignoring her muffled pleas of "No,   
   mother, no!" After her daughter went limp, Qaoud struck her in the   
   head with the stick.   
      
   Killing her sixth-born child took 20 minutes, Qaoud tells a visitor   
   through a stream of tears and cigarettes that she smokes in rapid   
   succession. "She killed me before I killed her," says the 43-year-old   
   mother of nine. "I had to protect my children. This is the only way I   
   could protect my family's honor."   
      
   The guilty brothers are in jail.   
      
   Qaoud's confessed crime, for which she must appear before a   
   three-judge panel Dec. 3, is one repeated almost weekly among   
   Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel. Female   
   virtue and virginity define a family's reputation in Arab cultures, so   
   it's women who are punished if that reputation is perceived as   
   sullied.   
      
   Victims' rights groups say the number of "honor crimes" appears to be   
   climbing, but at the same time, getting little attention. Israelis and   
   Palestinians are too busy with political and military issues to notice   
   what they dismiss as domestic disputes, says Suad Abu-Dayyeh, who   
   works for the Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling in East   
   Jerusalem.   
      
   Poverty and war have exacerbated the problem, says Nadera   
   Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a social work and criminology professor at Hebrew   
   University in Jerusalem and an expert on violence against women. "Men   
   do not have any power except over women," she says.   
      
   Palestinian police reported 31 cases in 2002, up from five during the   
   first half of 1999, according to the center's study. Police in Israel   
   investigated at least 18 honor killings in the past three years.   
   But the number of killings is likely higher, given that Palestinian   
   police investigate only crimes that have been reported, said Yousef   
   Tarifi, the Ramallah prosecutor assigned to Qaoud's case.   
   Shalhoub-Kevorkian says her research showed the likely number to be 15   
   times higher than the number of reported cases.   
      
   Qaoud says her husband, Abdul Rahim, 52, told her the Quran forbade   
   such killings. But neither his pleas nor those of Palestinian crisis   
   counselors swayed her.   
      
   According to court records, Rofayda was raped by her brothers, Fahdi,   
   22, and Ali, 20, in a bedroom they shared in the family's   
   three-bedroom house. On Nov. 26, 2002, doctors at a nearby hospital   
   who were treating Rofayda for an injured leg discovered she was eight   
   months pregnant.   
      
   Palestinian authorities whisked her off to a women's shelter in   
   Bethlehem, where she gave birth to a healthy boy Dec. 23. He has been   
   adopted by another Palestinian family, court records show.   
      
   Rofayda, meanwhile, wanted to return to her parents in the Ramallah   
   suburb of Abu Qash. Ramallah Gov. Mustafa Isa called a meeting with   
   the family and village elders, demanding they pledge in writing not to   
   harm the girl. "He asked me if everyone in the family and the village   
   would promise not to bother this girl, but I told him I couldn't give   
   him a guarantee," Abu Qash Mayor Faik Shalout says.   
      
   Rofayda returned home in late January without notifying the   
   authorities.   
      
   The shame was unbearable, Qaoud said. Relatives and friends refused to   
   speak to her family. Her elder daughters' husbands wouldn't allow them   
   to visit because Rofayda had returned home.   
      
   On Jan. 27, Rofayda sent word that she was in danger to counselors at   
   Abu-Dayyeh's center in East Jerusalem. They, in turn, called   
   Palestinian police in Ramallah, who have jurisdiction over Abu Qash.   
   The police said they couldn't get to the Qaoud home because of Israeli   
   checkpoints.   
      
   Qaoud, meanwhile, sent her husband, who suffers from heart disease, to   
   a doctor in the nearby village of Bir Zeit. Her three youngest   
   children went to a cousin's house.   
      
   At 11:30 p.m. she killed Rofayda, court records show. Tarifi, the   
   prosecutor, says he's convinced Qaoud had an accomplice, but Qaoud   
   insists she acted alone.   
      
   Qaoud turned herself in and, after four months in jail, was released   
   pending the resolution of her case.   
      
   While honor killings committed in the heat of the moment, for example,   
   by a husband who catches his wife in bed with another man, generally   
   carry a six-month to one-year jail term, Qaoud will likely be   
   sentenced to three to five years in prison, Tarifi says. The fact she   
   is a mother who was trying to protect her family's honor mitigates the   
   crime of premeditated murder, which is punishable by death under   
   Palestinian law, he adds.   
      
   The brothers are serving minimum 10-year sentences in a Palestinian   
   jail in the West Bank city of Jericho for statutory rape of a   
   relative, Tarifi says.   
      
   No trace of Rofayda or her brothers remains in the family home. Qaoud   
   says she ripped up all of their photographs and burned their clothes.   
   The bedroom in which she killed her daughter is now a storeroom.   
      
   Erasing the memories is harder, she admits.   
      
   She eases her pain by doting on her three children still living at   
   home, especially the youngest, Fatima, 9, whom she lavishes with   
   kisses. The children say they've forgiven Qaoud and return her   
   affection.   
      
   "My mother did this because she does not want us to be punished by   
   people," Fatima explains with a shy smile. "I love my mother much more   
   now than before."   
      
   Copyright 2003 The Washington Post   
      
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