Arrest mother as accomplice in Texas honor killing

On January 1, 2008, two American teenager sisters, 17 year-old Amina Said, and 18 year-old Sarah Said, were shot to death by their Egyptian father, Yaser Said, in Irving, Texas. After a lifetime of being physically and sexually abused by their father, the girls had finally decided to run away.

Sarah had rejected an arranged marriage with a much-older friend of her father’s whom she had never met. Both Amina and Sarah had boyfriends—and thus, their father viewed them as "whores” who had disobeyed the rules and who therefore deserved to die.

Yaser fled after the murder and has yet to be found.

The FBI briefly included him on their Most Wanted List for an Honor Killing but within days, they dropped the "honor killing” charge.

At the time, I was told that political pressure, mainly brought to bear by CAIR, (the Muslim Brotherhood in America), was responsible. Perhaps, fears of being charged with "Islamophobia” stayed the hand of local law enforcement and of the FBI.

Based on my own academic studies in Middle East Quarterly, there is no doubt that this was an classic honor killing.

Now, their great-aunt, Jill Abplanalp, has launched a petition on Change.org imploring the authorities to arrest Patricia "Tissie” Said, the mother of Amina and Sarah.

She has also written to me and to many Texas law enforcement officers about this matter. She wants "justice” for the murdered girls. She wants their mother, "Tissie,” tried as an accomplice she seems to be. But Jill is afraid that authorities will never revisit the case due to the kind of pressure they have experienced in the past.

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