Last update - 00:00 17/07/2007
Man sentenced to life in prison for stabbing his daughter to death
By Jacky Khoury, Haaretz Correspondent
The Nazareth District Court on Tuesday sentenced Kamal Hassan, a resident of the western Galilee village of Rame, to life in prison for murdering his daughter.
According to the indictment, 48-year-old Hassan was in the habit of terrorizing his family, beating his wife and children and barring them from fulfilling basic needs.
Hassan has been married 25 years and has seven children.
Among other abuses, the indictment reads, Hassan forbade his daughter Noel, 25, from leaving the house without a chaperone. He mostly accompanied her himself. He did not allow her to marry and foiled men's attempts to propose to her.
On May 3, 2006, while driving home from visiting a friend with his wife and daughter, the family stopped to pick vine leaves from a nearby vineyard. Hassan began cursing the two women and threatening to kill them.
In the ensuing argument, he pushed his wife aside and began stabbing his daughter with a large knife which had been hidden in his car. Noel fell to the ground and Hassan stabbed her several more times in the back, while his wife pleaded with him to stop and threw a shoe at him.
He then turned his daughter over and stabbed her in the stomach, saying to his wife ?I?ll finish on her and I?ll start on you.?
When Hassan finished stabbing Noel, he drove to a nearby gas station, throwing the knife on the track leading to the vineyard.
Upon reaching the station, he washed his hands and called the police, notifying them that his wife had stabbed their daughter.
The judges said the evidence suggested premeditated murder, saying he had purchased the knife two months before the incident, and had made sure that it was always with him and under his control.
In addition, after committing the murder he behaved rationally and calmly, driving safely to the gas station and requesting the police be called, rather than an ambulance to save his daughter?s life. This, the judges said, indicated that he anticipated a fatal outcome and had hoped to achieve it.
His failure to heed his wife?s entreaties, and the fact that he injured her when she tried to stop him physically, added to the judge?s conviction that he had acted with full motivation to kill his daughter.