Posted on May 22, 2014

Pakistani Immigrant Killed His Wife After She Made Him the Wrong Dinner–As His Lawyer Claims That’s Just His Culture

Leon Watson, Daily Mail (London), May 22, 2014

A Pakistani immigrant allegedly beat his wife to death with a stick for making him the wrong dinner, a court heard.

Noor Hussein, 75, believed he had the right to discipline 66-year-old Nazar at their apartment in Brooklyn, New York, his defense said.

But prosecutors claim he murdered her because she had made the mistake of cooking him a vegetarian meal made of lentils instead of goat meat.

At the start of Hussein’s murder trial yesterday, a court heard the victim was left a ‘bloody mess’.

Court papers quoted by the New York Post said: ‘The defendant asked [his wife] to cook goat and [his wife] said she made something else.

‘The conversation got louder and his wife disrespected defendant by cursing at defendant and saying motherf***** and that the defendant took a wooden stick and hit her with it on her arm and mouth.’

Defense attorney Julie Clark said Hussein admitted beating his wife but said that in his home country, beating your wife is customary.

She argued that Hussein, who met his wife in Pakistan before the couple married and moved to Brooklyn, is guilty of only manslaughter because he didn’t intend to kill her.

In her opening statements at the Brooklyn Supreme Court bench trial, Clark said: ‘He comes from a culture where he thinks this is appropriate conduct, where he can hit his wife.

‘He culturally believed he had the right to hit his wife and discipline his wife.’

However, Assistant District Attorney Sabeeha Madni said: ‘This was not a man who was trying to discipline his wife.’

She said neighbours would testify to the ‘years of abuse’ Hussein’s wife suffered.

Madni said that on the day of her death, Hussein attacked his wife as she lay in her bed, leaving deep lacerations on her head, arms and shoulders, and causing her brain to hemorrhage.

Court papers state he beat her with a stick that the family had found in the street and used to stir their laundry in a washtub.

He then tried to clean up the blood that splattered onto their bedroom wall before calling his son for help, Madni said.