The terribly vicious bludgeoning murder of an Iraqi-American woman disgusts us all. The woman, Kassim Alhimidi, had lived in the US since the early 90's, having resided in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia after Saddam Hussein's violent crackdown on Shiite Muslims following their brief and unsuccessful fight for independence after, you guessed it - the first Iraq war. She had met and married her husband there.
As has become common with US involvement in the Middle East, H.W. Bush, happy to pack up and leave after liberating Kuwait, withdrew our troops with no real concern for any minority groups that were likely to feel the wrath of Saddam as he both restored his tyrannical rule and healed his shattered ego by terrorizing people.
We did, though, provide some help with the no-fly zones to keep Saddam from doing much of the same to the Kurds and to stop some of the bleeding of the Iraqi Shiites. Kurdistan, carved up by the Turks, Iraq, and Iran many years ago, was more of a diplomatic problem for the US as we were worried about angering Turkey. If Kurdish fighters were to be fleeing across the border and possibly teaming up with Kurdish separatists in Turkey, the latter could be strengthened. As (pre-Erdogan) Turkey was the closest thing we had to an ally as far as Muslim nations go, we were not going to risk their ire.
As more details of the murder have been reported, I have begun to have suspicions. The note left at the scene stated “Go back to your country, you terrorist.”. OK, we all know that there are vicious non-Muslim criminals in the US, many of whom would be sufficiently hateful and cowardly to not only attack a Muslim simply due to his or her ethnic group and religion, but the wording of the letter not look like something that a white supremacist or other hate-mongering American would use.
To me, the wording has a made-up feel to it. Although I would not pretend to hold that neo-Nazis, etc. are the most eloquent of people, I have a hard time buying that such an individual would break into a home, murder an innocent woman, and tell her and the rest of her family to go home in that manner. The wording of the note just does not seem to fit. I will allow that it is possible that this was hate-crime, or the work of a person intent on a robbery who thought that such a note would throw off the cops in their investigation, but it sounds too fake. If this was a hate-crime, I would have expected something written in more detail, referring to 911 or something along those lines.
More intriguing is the details that the victim's husband and cousin reportedly provided:
All Italics and bolding are mine.
"Hamidi, 48, said he could not go on talking and explained that he was in a bad state before passing on the telephone to his wife’s cousin Hussein Alwadi.
“I saw her body in the dinning room a few minutes before the police arrived,” her cousin told Al Arabiya.
He said the murderer snuck into the house on Wednesday morning from the back garden.
“The garden has no fence so he was able to break the glass of the kitchen window right away and apparently he did so without making a noise.”
Hussein added that the attacker then reached for the window handle, opened it, and got inside.
“He did so after watching Shaima’s husband drive away with four of the children he was taking to school. Only Shaima and her eldest daughter Fatima stayed in the house. Fatima was asleep.”
The murderer, Hussein recounted, saw Shaima in the dinning room and attacked her with an iron rod or a spanner.
“He first hit her on her forehead then on her right ear. The third strike was on the back of her head. This was followed by five fast and consecutive strikes on her head and shoulders.”
Shaima, Hussein said, lost consciousness, upon which the attacker left the house.
“Because the attack was fast, the eldest daughter Fatima, who was asleep in the upper floor, did not hear a thing and only found out when she woke up and went downstairs to see her mother’s body drenched in blood.”
Hussein added that they immediately transferred Shaima to the hospital, where she died three days later after doctors failed to save her life and had to take her off life support."
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/03/27/203513.html
When I was a K9 handler (Before I retired from law enforcement), I would get called to crime scenes on a regular basis. I would interview the victim(s) and first-responding police personnel prior to making any attempts to obtain the track (Human scent) of the actor. When the victim (When he was not a witness) began to tell me how it happened, or provided all sorts of details that would explain how the bad guy was able to commit the crime without being caught in the act, the person being interviewed, more than nine times out of ten, either committed the crime or knew who did. It is also pretty weird that the Cousin discovered the body.
“I saw her body in the dinning room a few minutes before the police arrived,” her cousin told Al Arabiya.
He said the murderer snuck into the house on Wednesday morning from the back garden.
“The garden has no fence so he was able to break the glass of the kitchen window right away and apparently he did so without making a noise.”
Hussein added that the attacker then reached for the window handle, opened it, and got inside.
“He did so after watching Shaima’s husband drive away with four of the children he was taking to school. Only Shaima and her eldest daughter Fatima stayed in the house. Fatima was asleep.”
The murderer, Hussein recounted, saw Shaima in the dinning room and attacked her with an iron rod or a spanner.
“He first hit her on her forehead then on her right ear. The third strike was on the back of her head. This was followed by five fast and consecutive strikes on her head and shoulders.”
Shaima, Hussein said, lost consciousness, upon which the attacker left the house.
“Because the attack was fast, the eldest daughter Fatima, who was asleep in the upper floor, did not hear a thing and only found out when she woke up and went downstairs to see her mother’s body drenched in blood.”
Hussein added that they immediately transferred Shaima to the hospital, where she died three days later after doctors failed to save her life and had to take her off life support."
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/03/27/203513.html
When I was a K9 handler (Before I retired from law enforcement), I would get called to crime scenes on a regular basis. I would interview the victim(s) and first-responding police personnel prior to making any attempts to obtain the track (Human scent) of the actor. When the victim (When he was not a witness) began to tell me how it happened, or provided all sorts of details that would explain how the bad guy was able to commit the crime without being caught in the act, the person being interviewed, more than nine times out of ten, either committed the crime or knew who did. It is also pretty weird that the Cousin discovered the body.
Read the statement again and see if the details and Homicide Detective/Medical Examiner-type descriptions of the attack appear strange.
If this was a hate-crime, I hope that the actor is identified, arrested and nailed to the furthest extent that California Law allows. I detest bad guys, and would defend any innocent person with my life, no matter what the race or religion of the victim. I have no doubt that the cops assigned to this case feel the same way.
No matter what I may write about the beliefs or teachings of any group, I and all right-thinking people refuse to forget that, ultimately, there are good people and there are bad people. I want the bad people removed from society, period.
If this turns out to be an Honor-Killing or something similar in which the family is involved, not only do I hope that the same happens to the actor(s), but that the press makes sure that the US and the rest of the world knows that, in this case, no hate crime occurred.
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