US-Jordanian man gets life in prison for wife’s killing

LOS ANGELES: A Los Angeles man was sentenced to life in prison Monday for hiring a hitman to kill his 17-year- old wife, in a case that went unsolved for nearly two decades.

Morrad Ghonim, 43, who holds both US and Jordanian citizenship, was convicted in November of the murder of Vicki Ghonim, who was gunned down on July 23, 1992, while with her husband at a park in the town of La Mirada, southeast of Los Angeles.

The couple's six-month- old son was in the back seat of their car when the gunman approached the vehicle and shot the young mother several times.

Ghonim, who was 19 at the time, claimed that he had heard while in the park with his family what he thought were gang members catcalling his wife, who had screamed something back.

He told detectives that sensing trouble, he had ushered his family to their car and then heard gunfire but never saw his wife's attacker.

The case went cold until a breakthrough in 2009 led detectives to a drug dealer – Leon Martinez – serving time in prison for burglary.

Martinez was linked to the murder thanks to DNA evidence.

As part of a plea deal, he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and testified during Ghonim's trial that ended last month that he was paid 500 to stage a robbery and carry out the murder.

Ghonim married his second wife Nisreen Alfaleh, a woman from Jordan, after the killing. They had five children.

He was arrested in May 2015 in the Caribbean island of Antigua, where he was living with his third wife. Alfaleh testified during the trial that Ghonim in 2012 had made a cryptic remark when she told him she planned to take the kids and move to Texas.

“If you ever think of getting a divorce, I'll hurt you,” she recalled him saying. “It cost me 500 then, it won't cost me much now.”

Ghonim, who was convicted in the case in November, will serve his sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. — AFP