Egyptian immigrant Yaser Said was convicted of murdering his two teenage daughters in Texas, marking a rare conviction for “honor” murders in the United States.
Said, originally of Egypt, was convicted on August 9 on capital murder charges in the shooting deaths of his daughters — 18-year-old Amina and 17-year-old Sarah — in 2008. He will spend the remainder of his life in prison without parole, as prosecutors opted against the death penalty, KHOU reported.
The sisters’ bodies were found riddled with gunshots on January 1, 2008, in a cab at the Omni Hotel in Irving, northwest of Dallas. Amina was shot twice, while her younger sister Sarah sustained nine gunshot wounds. Prosecutors said that Sarah still mustered the strength to call 911 and report Yaser as their murderer.
As Breitbart News noted:
Prosecutors claim that on the day of the murder, Said claimed he would take the two girls in his taxicab to a restaurant in Lewisville, but instead took them to Irving, where he shot them.
The daughters initially escaped to Oklahoma and planned on starting a new life away from their father, however, their mother convinced them to return, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Prosecutors argued that because Amina and Sarah were dating boys who were not of the Muslim faith, Said became enraged, KDFW reported. They described the murders as “honor killings,” NBCDFW noted.
Regarding “honor killings,” Brandeis University states:
Intimate violence against women is a worldwide crisis. From ‘crimes of passion’ to ‘dowry deaths,’ not to mention domestic violence, many types of aggression against women occur at the hands of family members. The so-called ‘honor killing’ of women and girls in some Muslim nations is one horrifying manifestation of this global phenomenon.
These killings, which occur with shocking regularity in certain parts of the Middle East and South Asia, target women whose actions—actual or suspected—violate the honor of their families, an honor that is thought to depend on the sexual purity of its female members. Anything from speaking with an unrelated man, to rumored pre-marital loss of virginity, to an extra-marital affair can be cause for an attack, often carried out by a father or brother. In some especially tragic instances, even women and girls who have been raped are slain to remove the stain from the family honor. As with other forms of intimate violence against women, perpetrators are seldom punished.
The 65-year-old went into hiding for 12 years and made his way to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most wanted list. He was ultimately located in August 2020 in Justin, Texas, situated in Denton County, one county from where the girls were slaughtered. His brother Yassein and his son Islam have been convicted of aiding him in his evasion of law enforcement and are serving sentences of ten and twelve years, respectively, the Dallas Morning News reported.
The girls’ mother and Said’s ex-wife, Patricia Owens, testified during the trial and recounted that she met Said when she was only 14 years old, and he was more than twice her age at 29 years old. They married when she was 15, and she now suffers from PTSD.
“You deserve a lot more than what the judge gave to you. You deserve to die,” Owens said in part in her victim impact statement, as NBCDFW reported. “At this time, you are nothing. You are a prisoner and a murderer and the devil.”
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