Noor Faleh Almaleki Dies: Iraqi Woman In US Dead After Father Runs Her Over For Being Too Westernized

PHOENIX — A young Iraqi woman whose father allegedly hit her with his car because she had become too Westernized died from her injuries Monday after laying in a coma for nearly two weeks.

Noor Faleh Almaleki, 20, underwent spinal surgery and had been in a hospital since Oct. 20, when police say her father ran down her and her boyfriend's mother with his Jeep as the women were walking across a parking lot in the west Phoenix suburb of Peoria.

The other woman, Amal Khalaf, is expected to survive.

Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48, fled after the attack but was arrested Thursday when he arrived at Atlanta's airport, where he was sent from the United Kingdom after authorities denied him entrance.

Peoria police interviewed him and brought him back to Arizona over the weekend, but have declined to release what Almaleki said to them.

At a court hearing over the weekend in Phoenix, county prosecutor Stephanie Low told a judge that Almaleki admitted to committing the crime.

"By his own admission, this was an intentional act and the reason was that his daughter had brought shame on him and his family," Low said. "This was an attempt at an honor killing."

Family members had told police that Almaleki attacked his daughter because he believed she had become too Westernized and was not living according to his traditional Iraqi values.

Almaleki, wearing a jail uniform, said only his name and birth date during the hearing. He has declined requests to be interviewed.

Almaleki had faced charges of aggravated assault, but Peoria police spokesman Mike Tellef said the charges will be upgraded in light of Noor Faleh Almaleki's death.

Police said the Almalekis moved to Peoria from Iraq in the mid-1990s.

Comments

[Blayzen]

02:52 PM on 02/05/2010

We need to organize a world peace walk or some peace advocacy movement. All those who are in favor of world peace should participate. I believe in hummanity I also believe we are too advanced as a speices to still be fighting wars wasting resources and lives on fuquin' wars. Too often we raise funds after a crisis, and far little is done to raise funds to avert crisis. When will it stop? I'll tell you when - when it's too late.

[Blayzen]

02:42 PM on 02/05/2010

She was only 20 how sad... How can religion motivate you to murder your own flesh and blood.

[longtimegone]

12:25 AM on 11/05/2009

On May 8, 1970 (three days after the massacre at Kent State). In a "hippie commune" in Detroit's inner city, Arville Garland burst in at 2:30 am, a gun in each hand and killed his daughter, Sandy Garland, her partner, Scott Kabran, and friends, Greg Walls and Tony Brown. From the account in the Detroit Free Press at the time: "Many people say that Sandy and Scott and Greg and Tony deserved to be punished for the way they lived, for their long hair and their unconventional life-styles, for their hard rock music, for their dope. People say they might even have done what Garland did, if they had walked in on their daughter naked in bed, asleep with a hippie, a black boy in another bed in the same room." When the pace of change in society accelerates, confused parents can go over the edge, "clinging to guns and religion," not the proper way to hold either. I remember this case well, and I also recall that, in the climate of 1970, MANY parents were sympathetic with this particular father. Said Garland, of his daughter: "Children have no freedom. They are our property just like a book. She's my property and I can do whatever I want with her." Here is a link to an article in Time; notice how carefully the press contextualized the father in a sympathetic light, almost rationalizing his murders.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,877135,00.html

[marley22]

12:27 AM on 11/07/2009

You went back 40 years to find that one, did you?

[longtimegone]

05:31 PM on 11/09/2009

I lived through it, then it's rehashed in John Sinclair's Guitar Army. The link to Time merely confirms that to the SilentMajority, this action was logical and most were in sympathy with the father, though of course his actions could not be openly sanctioned. This was an era when many white, middle class American parents were feeling the same disorientation at the rapid changes in society and, subsequently, irrational anger when those changes were manifested by their own children, as some Muslim parents seem to be experiencing now.
Were you implying that the passage of time makes the point irrelevant?

[silvercreeklady]

04:12 PM on 11/03/2009

So ver sad!

[stptrck75]

04:03 PM on 11/03/2009

Isn't religion wonderful? The same imaginary voice in the sky which he believes told him it was right and good to kill his daughter is the exact same one we rational people are supposed to "respect". No way.

Respect needs to be earned. There is nothing respectable about religion. Rather it is all deplorable lies.

This story kinda makes me wish hell was real...

[MosheDayanHero]

05:57 PM on 11/03/2009

Well said!!!

[Jay818]

03:54 PM on 11/03/2009

He probably secretly wanted to have his way with her and when he couldn't control her, killed her...sad.

[billtmore]

03:37 PM on 11/03/2009

"merican values"

[silvercreeklady]

04:13 PM on 11/03/2009

Iraq values!

[JohninFL]

03:16 PM on 11/03/2009

This is unbelievable! He should be run down with the same vehicle he used to kill his own daughter!

[adambomber]

12:25 PM on 01/15/2010

That would be deemed "cruel and unusual punishment" and we must completely forget that she was certainly not maliciously attacked using cruel and unusual punishment. Killing daughter with car = honor? No Islamic values were mentioned, only Iraqi values, quietly a few Muslims are saying, "poor girl, glad it was Iraqi values blamed and not Islamic values."

From her age and when her family moved to the U.S. it seems as if I have spent as much time in Iraq as an adult as she ever did as a child. I've never met Iraqis with such an honor system - certainly not with ars. If running over your daughter is the best way to carry out an honor killing... well, there's nothing to be said for that. What ever happened to burying someone up to their head and pelting them with stones? What kind of an honor system is this?

Hammurabi's code (eye for an eye) for "honor killings" (only for cowardly ones with a vehicle, mind you) and things like aggravated pedophiles. Beware! In Seattle I witnessed a man sentenced to 5 years in prison 1/4 oz. possession of cocaine while on parole, only to watch the next trial that day docket end in court mandated counseling for a lawyer who was caught luring pre-teenage girls into a van. Are we really "a nation of laws."

P.S. Lived through a broken back car strike. Crazed soccer mom, not a botched honor killing. I think.

[Targetdog]

03:12 PM on 11/03/2009

"Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48, fled after the attack"

If they so believe what they are doing is right, why do they always flee? 'Cause they are cowards!

[wijg]

03:09 PM on 11/03/2009

Senseless.

[ignorantwillyharper]

03:07 PM on 11/03/2009

What happen to the old eye for a eye, tie him to a post, brick wall, what ever and send a vehicle to run him over? If we'd start executing people the way they murder, it might start to remind them a eye for a eye will be carried out.

Oh, that's right we've thrown away the old Testment.

[Proxy11]

03:16 PM on 11/03/2009

No we are a nation of laws.

[ignorantwillyharper]

03:56 PM on 11/03/2009

Well hows that working out for us?

[Proxy11]

05:02 PM on 11/03/2009

I don't know, how's it working out for?

[alohaz]

02:59 PM on 11/03/2009

Honor killing? No comment really just....honor killing?

[colorperdaughter]

03:56 PM on 11/03/2009

dishonorable man

[BunnyX]

12:55 AM on 11/04/2009

One of the less often mentioned oxymorons.

[A Meat Beetle]

02:56 PM on 11/03/2009

What a wonderful world it would be if people were guided by knowledge instead of belief.

[BobQueuePublic]

03:47 PM on 11/03/2009

You speak well, all-seeing Relacement eye.

[stptrck75]

04:06 PM on 11/03/2009

Well said!

[TampaStephie]

02:53 PM on 11/03/2009

Extremism in any form is dangerous. This is so sad and yet, I can't help but feel this is the norm in Iraq. It's black or white, no gray area for the males in that country. Why did he ever bring his family here if he thought they might become too westernized? For the opportunity, yes. But it is naive, yes "extreme" to believe you can come here and not absorb some of the western ways. His poor daughter...so young, torn between friends and family, and finally, she pays the ultimate price for her father's extremism.

[petridish]

02:49 PM on 11/03/2009

What a stunningly beautiful young woman, very sad story.

[adambomber]

12:27 PM on 01/15/2010

Yes. Do you think this would be getting as much attention if we did not have the beautiful myspace picture?