Muslim TV exec guilty of beheading wife

Ben Plonie just tipped me to an awkward Valentine’s Day story, though the news actually came down last Monday; I just missed it.

You might remember Muzzammil Hassan, the owner of a Muslim TV station in Buffalo, N.Y., who was accused of beheading his wife in 2009. A week ago his murder trial ended with a guilty verdict, as the above report discusses.

Here’s the story from Reuters:

Muzzammil Hassan used two hunting knives to kill Aasiya Hassan on Feb 12, 2009, six days after she filed for divorce, prosecutors said.

Hassan claimed during the trial that he was a battered spouse in fear for his own life. Hassan, 46, acted as his own attorney.

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The slaying was a “final, brutal and fatal act of control and domination,” prosecutor Colleen Curtin-Gable said during her nearly two hour-long summation on Monday.

“She may well have been conscious when he began cutting off her head, and he’s talking about his hurt and pain,” she said.

Based on the fact the verdict came down the same day that this story ran in the Daily Mail saying the trial was getting started suggests to me it was a very, very short murder trial. May have been a consequence of Hassan acting as his own attorney—always a bad idea—and, as Slate reported, comparing himself to Nelson Mandela, Ronald Reagan, and Mahatma Gandhi and essentially saying his wife started it, even if he ended it.