An odd Juxtaposition

On CNN there is an article in the Tech section: Camera phone evolution has only just begun.

CNN typically doesn't change the science and technology articles over the weekend, so it has been there since at least Friday.

In this time the camera phone recording of the death of Du’a Khalil Aswad was released to the public.

The death of this young woman has been entered in to the public domain with many confusing pieces of information. At present it appears she was killed for being a 17 year old girl who liked a male who was not a member of her religious sect.

I am linking to the video here. Please do not watch it unless you have a very strong stomach. I will record in writing the contents of the video for those who cannot stomach watching. Even the written account may be hard to stomach.

Please note that it is a poor day to be a human to understand that this kind of behavior still happens.

Video at this link . Please note that this site has nudity but is one of the few places that had high quality footage of the events that are so disturbing.

It should be noted that this does not appear to be the entire video. I'm not even sure about the web site that is hosting it. There are a few camera phones on the scene (as shown on the camera phone itself) recording the process.

The video starts out with fast movement (and low quality) in a crowd that could be anywhere. You can hear some men talking loudly in a foreign language. You can hear a woman screaming something. There is some tugging in the crowd. The attack (and other videos confirm this) has already been in progress for some time.

You can see another person with a camera phone holding it up high and moving people out of the way to try and get a picture or video of what is going on.

You can see a person in a black shirt move quickly downward with their elbow in what looks like a wrestling move to hit an opponent. Then you see the girl on the ground in her underwear on her lower body, curled up in a fetal-like position.

She is moving, as the movements of a person deep in show, he hand touching her face. The face is not recognizable, but you can tell there is blood on it.

You can see the man in the black shirt again (or another person in a black shirt, kicking her and bracing himself against another person in the crowd.

There is a lot of movement and you lose sight of the woman.

A man walks by her and casually kicks her in the back of the head. You cannot see anything of the man's face, only his lower body.

You can see another camera phone capturing the incident. She isn't moving now, but she is in fetal position. I believe she is still alive at this moment. A man in tan either steps on her or kicks her and then picks her up partially by her red outer garment. She is moving to try and protect herself slightly to no effect. A number of people appear to kick her at this time. The movement may not have been conscious, she doesn't appear to be moving or defending herself anymore.

A man covers her lower body with a jacket. At the same time someone picks up her head and slams her head down on a large rock (approximately 1 ft across) on the ground. She doesn't react and immediately afterward follows a flurry of kicks from various men.

Several heel kicks are administered to her by a male in a black sweat suit with two white stripes running down its side vertically.

It sounds like a sports event. There is a 'ehhhh' by the crowd and an oh. But you cannot see past the person in front of the camera phone holder to understand what was done to the girl at this time.

She might be dead, but evidence from later in the video indicates that at this point in time she is not dead, thankfully, she appears to be unconscious.

When she comes back in to view you see a large cement block leaning on her head. There is no blood around her head on the ground at this point. Again, the individual with the sweat suit and the white stripes picks up the cement block and delivers what I believe to be the killing blow, directly to her head.

It is at this point that you can see the trail of blood leading from her head under her body emerge from under her body on the ground below her.

The individual with the black sweat pants appears to be hopping around and is wearing a red shirt. The trail of blood leading from her body continues to grow. She may not be completely dead and the body, the heart is still pumping and extending the size of the blood staining the road. The blood trail from her head extends in three trails, some which appear to be at least 3 or 4 feet long. This is life leaking away from the body.

There is yelling and what sounds like cheering at a sporting even throughout the sequence.

Concerned for decency, an individual adjusts the jacket that now covers her behind and partially her legs.


There is a lot of commotion, men carefully avoiding her blood trails as the leap around the scene. People taking pictures with their camera phones. One of the picture takes puts the camera within two feet of her head and clicks off a picture.

Someone picks up the block and throws it back down on to her - on the back this time instead of the head. The tell-tale ya yayayyayaayayayoi sound that middle eastern people make often when in celebration is made by one person and then taken up by many. The jacket is once again adjusted to cover her almost nudity.

A casual kick hits her in the back as an irregularly shaped stone (large) is thrown at her. The large cement block is once again thrown on to her dead back.

People are whisling (like at a baseball game) and even yayyyying like a person has thrown a strikeout ending the game in victory.

I am glad that I cannot understand the words coming from the voices recorded on the video.

A person in denim jeans casually walks by, avoiding the blood staining the ground and turns around opposite of the camera phone wielding person.

Being careful not to get blood on his shoes, one individual is standing on top of the irregularly shaped stone - balancing slightly most probably looking down at the dead girl. This person, I think gets down.

Another individual climbs up on one of the cement blocks and uses that same irregularly shaped stone to balance and kicks the dead girl twice, mostly with the heel.

He stumbles a bit and probably gets some blood on his sneakers. Someone knocks one of the cement blocks off her body.

After a lot of talking - a brief shot of the faces (not clear) of the people on the other side of the circle of men surrounding the dead girl.

There is a lot of jostling movement, in which it is hard to determine what is happening.

There is someone speaking loudly, with a beige shirt on , and pointing at the dead girl's body with the fingers of his hand. It appears that he has a teenage boy in the clasp of his hand and he forces the boys head in to camera view and back again. As if to say "See , this is what we do."

I'm not sure what this individual is doing, he appears to be attempting to pick her up or re-arrange her body. Blood drips from the side of her head that was on the road.

After some time passes , a man in a orange/red shirt crosses over her body, possibly kicking her in the process, he face is clearly visible (and why we cannot see exactly what his feet are doing).

A shot of many faces watching in close quarters. An enormous crows is revealed as the camera is raised to show everyone is there. It is not clear that all the people are there for this girls killing, but later on it will be apparent that they are.

There is a lot of confusion, people standing and talking. A man straddles the head of her body standing, apparently needing a better position to talk.

He and a few others begin moving the body. One man adjusts the jacket covering her underwear covered behind. Mustn't see the females uncovered behind. No, just kill her brutally. That's much better.

There is a lot of confusion and talking for some time. A man in a black jacket grabs her dead arms to pick her up.

Other men are helping him pick her up and they carry her almost like a dear on a post being carried between hunters.

Her body is being partially dragged and the jacket almost comes off her lower body. The men stop and adjust the jacket.

They begin to carry her again and pass a pile of large cement blocks like the two or three that were used on their victim.

The camera angle moves upward and the visibility of her body goes away. Now you see that along with the three or four people carrying her unceremoniously, that there are a number of men walking along as her body is being moved.

The camera angle changes again - to an overview of the crowd. The entire crowd moving in the same direction (with) the movement of her body.

That is the end of the video. We cannot tell exactly where the large group are taking her body.

There are a number of comments that I would make on this video and the culture behind it. It is clear that the primary participants in this film were her family and not Muslims.

However, the honor killing of this young girl is a cultural - pre-Islam Arab practice, which is indeed practiced by many Muslims in the region. Of course all Kurds, and all Muslims are not the kind of people who can do this.

My family knows Muslims who live in Trinidad and they are nothing like this.

It is, however, the enabling male-oriented religions that allow and endorse this kind of behavior. But it has taken me some time over the period of two days to even compile this description of the activity on the video. Tomorrow, it will be time to write about not only how wrong this is, but why it is wrong.

I'd offer my condolences to the family, but it appears that they are the cause of the death and deserve only condemnation.