The spilling of the blood of a woman believed to have disgraced her family is an accepted way of restoring honour in some cultures, an expert testified at Hasibullah Sadiqi's double first-degree murder trial earlier this month.
Dr. Shahrzad Mojab, a professor at the University of Toronto, said if a woman from a country such as Afghanistan is "misbehaving" in public or in private, whether it be through her words or her actions, male members of the family such as fathers, brothers and uncles will often take it upon themselves to rid the family of the woman, thereby eliminating the source of the dishonour.
"It's the restitution of the status of the family within the community," said Mojab. "It's a cleansing of the family."
Organizations such as the United Nations and Human Rights Watch have for years publicly condemned these so-called "honour killings" which have been reported in may Asian and Middle Eastern countries. In some cases, women identified as dishonourable are encouraged to commit suicide in order to restore the family's reputation while at the same time preventing another family member from being held responsible for her death.
Mojab said honour killings were seldom talked about for centuries but awareness of the issue in recent decades has brought it into the light.
"It's not a new phenomenon," she said. "The awareness now has sort of created the possibility for us to better understand this particular form of violence against women."
Mojab said male members of a family who carry out honour killings often express feelings of affection towards the women they kill.
"The fathers and the brothers claim the act happened out of passion or love for the daughter or the sister," she said. "They argue she had to be sacrificed."
Mojab said she's also seen evidence the women themselves don't hate the men even when they know their lives are about to end.
"I've seen letters written from daughters to fathers who know what will happen," she said. "They are filled with references to love and how much they loved each other."
