Iraqi Man Strangles Pregnant Teen Wife with Her Own Hijab

An Iraqi man has been arrested on suspicion of killing his wife, to which he later admitted, after she refused to cook for him.

Ali Alzougeibi, the head of police in Babylon province, said that the suspect killed his 17-year-old wife, who was pregnant, a few months after they got married.

The suspect, named as Abbas, allegedly admitted to police that he had used his wife’s hijab to hang her, which led to the death of the baby as well as her own.

Alzougeibi said that the man initially claimed that his wife committed suicide, but having been confronted with evidence to the contrary, he admitted to murdering her.

Meanwhile, Egyptian police arrested a man in Cairo’s Giza district on suspicion of strangling his mistress to death. According to police, the victim asked the suspect, with whom she had a protracted relationship, to marry her.

During a quarrel that ensued, he allegedly killed her and fled the scene. He was arrested following an ambush by police and later admitted to killing her.

Domestic violence has plagued the Arab world, and women’s organizations’ efforts to curtail it have met with little success. In Egypt, 99 percent of women said they were victims of domestic violence, compared to 47 percent in Tunisia. In Morocco, four million adult women said they have been victims of violence, in 50 percent of cases by their partners.