Shaima Alawadi and One Million Hijabs?

Kassim Alhimidi

Daily Mail

A regular reader sent me this link as a follow-up to the murder of an Iraqi woman in San Diego, Shaima Alawadi, whom I blogged about last spring, my last entry noting that the police were no longer considering the killing a hate crime, supposedly motivated by hatred of Muslims, and evidence that she was filing for divorce before her death was raising suspicions in the minds of some about the husband, Kassim Alhimidi, who had left for Iraq to bury his wife. I didn't expect him to return, but here he is, arrested in America:

Eight months after begging the public for any information that could lead to finding his wife's killers, Kassim Alhimidi himself was arrested and charged with the homicide.

Police arrested Alhimidi, 48, of El Cajon, Calif., Thursday for the murder of his 32-year-old wife, Shaima Alawadi, according to ABC News affiliate KGO.

Alawadi's family called her death a hate crime after she was found beaten with a tire iron in her living room with a note calling her 'a terrorist.'

He is charged with first degree murder.

The death of the mother of five sent shockwaves through El Cajon, which is home to one of the nation's largest concentrations of Iraqi immigrants.

Shortly after the homicide, Alhimidi was in court making emotional pleas to his wife's 'killer' and begging for information.

This past March as his 15-year-old son Mohammed translated from Arabic, Alhimidi said: 'The main question we would like to ask is what are you getting out of this and why did you do it?'

Maybe he can answer that question now himself . . . if he's guilty. We have to keep in mind the American legal principle of "innocent until proven guilty." The article, however, "Husband of 'One Million Hijabs' victim arrested for beating her to death months after making emotional plea to find her 'racist' killer," appears in the Daily Mail (November 10, 2012), a British paper, and maybe British tabloids are not quite as committed to that principle, for the caption supplied with the photo above said:

Liar: Kassim Alhimidi himself was arrested and charged in his wife's death months after telling the press that it was a hate crime perpetrated by racists

Or perhaps the Daily Mail has some details not yet made public. If the paper is right, then I think we need one million hijabs doffed against honor killings . . .