A PAKISTANI-BORN American TV executive has been founded guilty of murder after a court ruled that he had beheaded his wife in what has been described as a “final act of dominance and control”.
Buffalo, New York resident Muzzammil Hassan – better known as ‘Mo’ and who had represented himself in the case – was convicted after less than an hour of deliberations. He had killed his wife, the court ruled, when she had sought a divorce.
His wife Aasiya had been stabbed over 40 times with two hunting knives, the Hindustan Times reports, before her head had been sawn off. When her body was recovered, her severed head was found several miles away.
Hassan had insisted, however, that he had been the victim in their relationship, and said he had been the victim of “psychological rape” with his wife using the couple’s children as pawns against him in their gradual separation.
Making his closing remarks to the jury before it went into deliberations, Hassan said those giving evidence against him were of the opinion that only women could be victims of domestic abuse.
“All these people are hearing stories… they want you to believe stories as evidence,” he had told the jury. “They have no witnesses.”
The court had previously been shown CCTV videos of Hassan in a Wal-Mart two hours before the killing, testing the sharpness of two knives before buying them.
Other clips showed him on video at his TV station, surprising his wife from behind when CBS News reported he had ‘lured her in’ to the station, on the premise that he needed a change of clothes delivered.
Hassan and his wife had founded Bridges TV, a station that had been set up to counter the negative portrayal of Muslims in the post-9/11 era. It was at the TV station’s complex that the murder took place.
A local station WIVB reported testimony from the couple’s children, who said their father had become more violent in the recent past.
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