Monday, March 26, 2012

Woman beaten in San Diego attack to be buried in Iraq



Iraqi-American Shaima Alawadi was found unconscious in her home with note next to her body that said 'go back to your country, you terrorist'

guardian.co.uk, Monday 26 March 2012

"The body of an Iraqi-American woman who was found beaten unconscious in her home next to a note that said "go back to your country, you terrorist" will be flown to Iraq for her funeral, a local Muslim leader has said.

Shaima Alawadi, 32, was taken off life support on Saturday, three days after her 17-year-old daughter found her unconscious in the dining room of the family home in El Cajon, San Diego.

Investigators said they were exploring all aspects of her death, including the possibility that the attack was a hate crime.

Alawadi's father is a Shia cleric in Iraq, and the Iraqi government will pay to have her body sent back, a Muslim leader in Michigan told the Detroit Free-Press on Sunday. "Everybody is outraged," Imam Husham al-Husainy, of the Karbalaa Islamic Education Centre, in Dearborn, said. "This is too evil, too criminal."

The woman's daughter, Fatima Al Himidi, told KUSI-TV that her mother had been beaten on the head repeatedly with a tyre iron.....

Zayadi said Alawadi's brothers worked for the US army, serving as cultural advisers to train soldiers who were going to be deployed to the Middle East. Another family friend told the San Diego Union-Tribune that Alawadi's husband had a similar job.

El Cajon, north-east of downtown San Diego, is home to one of the largest Iraqi communities in the US."

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