i'm glad we're bringing 'democracy' to iraq

you can see it in action every place you turn

well i guess this type of thing doesn't matter TOO very much. after all it IS just murdering women. not like it's about murdering REAL people or anything.

Hitmen charge $100 a victim as Basra honour killings rise

Fathers and husbands who openly hire assassins on the streets of the city are going unpunished
Afif Sarhan
Authorities in the southern Iraqi city of Basra have admitted they are powerless to prevent 'honour killings' in the city following a 70 per cent increase in religious murders during the past year.

There has been no improvement in conviction rates for these killings. So far this year, 81 women in the city have been murdered for allegedly bringing shame on their families. Only five people have been convicted.

During 2007 the Basra security committee recorded 47 'honour killings' and three convictions. One lawyer in the city described how police were actively protecting perpetrators and said that a woman in Basra could now be murdered by hired hitmen for as little as $100 (£65).

The figures come despite international outrage which followed The Observer's coverage of the death of 17-year-old Rand Abdel-Qader, who was murdered by her father last April in an 'honour killing' after falling in love with a British soldier in Basra. The 4,000 British troops stationed in the city since the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003 withdrew to the airport last September.

Rand Abdel-Qader was killed after her family discovered that she had formed a friendship with a 22-year-old infantryman whom she knew as Paul. She was suffocated by her father then hacked at with a knife. Abdel-Qader Ali was subsequently arrested and released without charge.

Rand's mother, Leila Hussein, who divorced her husband after the killing, went into hiding but was tracked down weeks later and assassinated by an unknown gunman. Her husband had told The Observer that police had congratulated him for killing his daughter.....

stop honour killings

see all the changes we've brought to

iraq?
first her daughter rand. then when leila hussein gathered enough strength and courage to leave her brute of a husband, she was murdered as well.

he most likely will NEVER be punished

Iraqi Mother Killed for Protesting Honor Killings
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville

Those were the fateful words of Leila Hussein, an Iraqi woman who was killed after telling her family's story to The Observer, after her husband and sons murdered their 17-year-old daughter/sister for striking up a friendship with a British soldier—a murder to which her husband confessed, but for which he has faced no charges and has been congratulated by police.

It was two weeks after Rand's death on 16 March that a grief-stricken Leila, unable to bear living under the same roof as her husband, found the strength to leave him. She had been beaten and had had her arm broken. It was a courageous move. Few women in Iraq would contemplate such a step.

...Leila turned to the only place she could, a small organisation in Basra campaigning for the rights of women and against 'honour' killings. Almost immediately she began receiving threats - notes calling her a 'prostitute' and saying she deserved to die like her daughter.

...[S]he was staying at the house of 'Mariam', one of the women's rights campaigners, whose identity The Observer has agreed not to reveal. On the morning of 17 May, they were joined by another volunteer worker and set off to meet 'a contact' who was to help Leila travel to Amman, where she would be taken in by an Iraqi family. .......