Death of a woman.

Friends, this is what our war has brought:

Mother who defied the killers is gunned down

Five weeks ago Leila Hussein told The Observer the chilling story of how her husband had killed their 17-year-old daughter over her friendship with a British soldier in Basra. Now Leila, who had been in hiding, has been murdered - gunned down in cold blood. Afif Sarhan in Basra and Caroline Davies report on the final act of a brutal tragedy.

Leila Hussein lived her last few weeks in terror. Moving constantly from safe house to safe house, she dared to stay no longer than four days at each. It was the price she was forced to pay after denouncing and divorcing her husband - the man she witnessed suffocate, stamp on, then stab their young daughter Rand in a brutal 'honour' killing for which he has shown no remorse.

Though she feared reprisals for speaking out, she really believed that she would soon be safe. Arrangements were well under way to smuggle her to the Jordanian capital, Amman. In fact, she was on her way to meet the person who would help her escape when a car drew up alongside her and two other women who were walking her to a taxi. Five bullets were fired: three of them hit Leila, 41. She died in hospital after futile attempts to save her.

Her death, on 17 May, is the shocking denouement to a tragedy which had its origins in an innocent friendship between her student daughter, Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, and a blond, 22-year-old British soldier known only as Paul.

This is fucked up so many different ways, it is hard to know where to begin. But start with the initial report of the daughter's death:

Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, told her closest friend that she was in love from the moment she set eyes on the young British soldier working alongside her in Basra, and she dreamed of a future with him.

It was an innocent infatuation but five months after Rand, a student of English at Basra University, met Paul, a 22-year-old soldier posted to southern Iraq, she was dead. She was stamped on, suffocated and stabbed by her father. Several brutal knife wounds punctured her slender, bruised body - from her face to her feet. He had done it, he proclaimed to the neighbours who soon gathered round, to 'cleanse his honour'.

* * *

'I screamed and called out for her two brothers so they could get their father away from her. But when he told them the reason, instead of saving her they helped him end her life,' she (the mother, Leila) said.

* * *

At the police station where the father was held Sergeant Ali Jabbar told The Observer last week: 'Not much can be done when we have an "honour killing" case. You are in a Muslim society and women should live under religious laws.'

Wrap your head around that. The father, with the help of her two brothers, killed his daughter for talking with a British soldier. And then he wasn't even charged, because of religion.

And of course, the story doesn't stop there:

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British soldier in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city's Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. 'They are men and know what honour is,' he said.

* * *

He said his daughter's 'bad genes were passed on from her mother'. Rand's mother, 41, remains in hiding after divorcing her husband in the immediate aftermath of the killing, living in fear of retribution from his family. She also still bears the scars of the severe beating he inflicted on her, breaking her arm in the process, when she told him she was going. 'They cannot accept me leaving him. When I first left I went to a cousin's home, but every day they were delivering notes to my door saying I was a prostitute and deserved the same death as Rand,' she said.

'She was killed by animals. Every night when go to bed I remember the face of Rand calling for help while her father and brothers ended her life,' she said, tears streaming down her face.

And now the mother is dead, as well.

This morning on the Diane Rehm show I heard a woman call in during a discussion about the Democratic primary. She said, as I have heard other Clinton supports say, that what was happening was nothing less than sexism run roughshod over the rights of women, and that the compromise to give the Michigan and Florida delegates one-half vote at the convention was akin to the '3/5 personhood' for slaves in the original US Constitution, for purposes of apportioning representation in Congress. And she said, as so many other Clinton supporters have said, that she would vote for John McCain if Clinton did not receive the Democratic nomination.

John McCain. Who not only supports the war in Iraq, but thinks that things are going great there.

And the case of Leila Hussein and her daughter Rand is just one example of what our war has led to. Just one example of what it really means for a woman to not have anything approaching equality. Just one example of what happens when a religion is allowed to make law. Just one example of what John McCain wants us to see continue.

Think about that.

Jim Downey

(Via Pharyngula. Cross posted to dKos.)