Dad's Arrest Exposes Support Network Behind Alleged Honor Killers

[Valin]

Middle East Forum

Phyllis Chesler
The Investigative Project on Terrorism
September 11, 2020

The FBI-led Dallas Violent Crimes Task Force captured Yaser Abdel Said Aug. 26, 12 years after he allegedly murdered his two teenage daughters in 2008. Yaser's son and brother, Yassein and Islam Said, were also arrested for "harboring a dangerous fugitive."

Yaser Abdel Said, accused of honor killing his two teenage daughters, Amina and Sarah, escaped arrest for 12 years with alleged help from sympathetic relatives.

Yaser Said's daughters, Amina and Sarah, were two beautiful, lively, and academically ambitious American girls, growing up in Irving and Lewisville, suburbs of Dallas. According to Texas relatives, their Egyptian-born father, Yaser, physically, sexually, and psychologically abused the girls starting when they were around 8 and 9. He routinely monitored and stalked them and threatened their lives. Their mother, Texas-born Patricia ("Tissie") Said, denied Yaser's violence. She also persuaded her daughters to recant their accusations of sexual abuse since "Daddy would have to go to jail."

Guns were everywhere at home. Tissie, who married Yaser when she was 15, said she thought it was just a joke. Walls were punched, computers and desks broken, eyes blackened, cheeks reddened—braces embedded into lips. Things escalated when Amina refused to marry an unknown, much older man in Egypt for the sake of her father's honor—and bank account. Things really escalated when their father learned that they had Christian boyfriends, one of whom was Black and Hispanic. Now, Yaser viewed his daughters as "sluts" and "whores," whom he must kill.

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This case raises some important questions.

How can an underemployed taxi driver escape detection for so long? Who, beyond his son and brother, "harbored" him? His family, which was under surveillance? Other Egyptians? Was he helped by people who saw him as a Muslim being persecuted by infidel law enforcement?

Should family members, including mothers, be arrested and tried as accomplice-collaborators in an honor killing?

How should North American teachers, school nurses, and social service agencies respond when they see a Muslim girl coming to school bruised and with a black eye? What resources do we have to protect children in danger from their own families?