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Another Islamic Wack Job!
  

Dad charged with reluctant bride's 'honor killing'

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A Pakistani man is charged with killing his 25-year-old daughter in Georgia because she wanted out of an arranged marriage, police said.

Chaudhry Rashid, 54, of Jonesboro, an Atlanta suburb, is scheduled to appear in court Tuesday afternoon to face murder charges in the death of Sandeela Kanwal, according to court records.

He was arrested early Sunday, after his wife called police at about 2 a.m. She reported that she had been awakened by screaming but couldn't understand the language, a Clayton County police report said. She said she was afraid and left the house to call police.

Officers found Kanwal dead in an upstairs bedroom of the home, according to the police report.

Rashid's wife told authorities Kanwal recently had been married in Pakistan -- an arranged marriage, she said. The young woman's husband was living in Chicago, Illinois, police said, but Kanwal remained at her father's home and worked at a metro Atlanta Wal-Mart for a brief time.

"The victim was not interested in marrying, nor remaining married to her husband," the police report said, citing information authorities received from Rashid's wife. "This was causing a great deal of friction between the victim and her father," so much so that the two had not spoken in two months, the report said. Watch how an arranged marriage ended in violence »

Police found Rashid sitting behind a vehicle in the driveway, and he seemed "distraught and possibly mournful," the report said. He told police, "My daughter is dead." But when asked how she died, Rashid did not answer -- "he just dropped his head."

Ligature marks were found on Kanwal's body and police found an iron and cord by the doorway of her bedroom, where she was found. A necklace was found downstairs next to what appeared to be a prayer table.

"Apparently she and the father had argued over the marriage and the fact that it was arranged, and at some point during the altercation he did end up killing his daughter," said Clayton County police spokesman Tim Owens.

Neighbor Veronda Luckett said the family has always been "relatively quiet." She said two females were seen at the home, and "they seemed to be decent, lovely people."

So-called "honor killings" -- the slaying by family members of a woman or girl thought to be bringing them shame -- are usually kept quiet, making it difficult to determine how frequently they occur. The United Nations Population Fund estimated in September 2000 that as many as 5,000 women and girls fall victim to such killings each year.

"My immediate reaction was that this is an anomaly in the South Asian community," Ajay Nair, associate dean of multicultural affairs at Columbia University, told CNN Tuesday. "Most South Asian-American families enjoy wonderful relationships within their families."

"I think there's ways that we can rationalize it and make sense of it, particularly in thinking about new immigrant communities in the U.S. and thinking about some of the struggles that they face and the generation gap and the cultural differences that children do face," he said. "I think there are some issues there, but by and large, this isn't a rampant problem within South Asian communities. What is a problem, I think, is domestic violence, and that cuts across all communities."

Nair said he believes a "significant human rights campaign" is needed to address such killings.

"I think more people need to recognize this as a global issue. It's not just a U.S. issue. I think it happens across the world, and I think people need to recognize domestic violence and any kind of violence related to women as a serious, serious issue."