Twin brother of victim testifies in ‘honor killings’
He tells jury that the two siblings discussed harassment from suspect weeks before death
The twin brother of a Spring man fatally shot and killed in an alleged “honor killing” testified how they discussed his possible death two weeks before it took place.
Cory Beavers, 34, described to the jury how he discussed constant harassment that was taking place with his brother, Coty, just before he died in what authorities said was one of two murders in 2012 orchestrated by the victim’s father-in-law.
Cory Beavers broke down Wednesday in sobs as photos of his slain twin brother were shown to the jury in the capital murder trial of Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan, a 60year-old devout Muslim who was angry over his daughter’s marriage to Beavers’ brother.
“I told him the police aren’t going to do anything until they have a dead body,” Cory Beavers said in tears. “The harassment was just escalating. Even after they moved, it was following them, getting
worse.”
Cory Beavers is an essential witness in the case against Irsan, not just because his brother was killed, but because his girlfriend, Gelareh Bagherzadeh, a 30-yearold Iranian activist and medical student, was gunned down in January 2012. She was shot in the head as she arrived at her parents’ Galleria-area town house late at night after spending time with Cory Beavers.
The two shootings have garnered international news coverage as “honor killings” allegedly committed by Irsan to avenge his daughter’s conversion to Christianity and her marriage to a Christian man.
Texas law allows a jury to convict Irsan of capital murder if prosecutors can prove the two slayings were part of the same plan. However, a Irsan’s defense team told the jury no one knows exactly what happened in either case and that Irsan was not connected to either killing.
Prosecutors have said he plotted to kill his daughter, Nesreen Irsan, who ran away from home in 2011 when she was 23. The Jordanian immigrant wanted to kill her husband and her close friend Bagherzadeh — who encouraged the marriage — first so that his daughter would suffer the loss before she died, prosecutors said.
Irsan allegedly stalked and harassed his daughter and her friends before the shootings, calling college classmates including Bagherzadeh, who stood up to him, according to Cory Beavers.
“He asked her, ‘Is this that Iranian b----?’ She immediately got angry and started yelling in Farsi,” Beavers testified.
Cory and Coty Beavers met Nesreen and her sister, Nadia, while attending Lone Star College in 2010. The two sisters had been homeschooled in a strict household at their father’s Montgomery County compound and wore traditional Muslim headscarves.
They were prohibited from dating anyone and, testimony showed, their father told them he would kill them and their boyfriends if they dated, especially Christians.
In the months after Coty and Nesreen met and fell in love, Nadia became jealous and threatened to tell their father, Beavers said.
Nadia also flirted with Cory Beavers and other men at school, Beavers testified. He said she sent him explicit photos including wearing just her underwear but he did not return her affections, he testified.
“She just wasn’t a good person,” he said.
He told the jury how, as they were attending community college, the two brothers wanted to take Nesreen to a fast food restaurant off campus but Nadia didn’t want her sister to go.
“She told Coty, ‘I can’t wait until my father puts a bullet in your head,” Cory Beavers testified.
In June 2011, Nesreen ran away from home and moved into the Beavers’ home in Spring. She introduced Cory Beavers to her friend Bagherzadeh and they started dating.
During fall 2011, when the Beavers twins were dating the two girls, cars they owned were repeatedly vandalized outside their home.
First, air was let out of the tires, then the tires started getting slashed. Sugar was put in their gas tanks and, finally, an Coty’s Acura Integra was stolen.
Ali Irsan continued to call his daughter and her friends, demanding that she come home. He reached Bagherzadeh, who was angry because he would not leave Nesreen alone, and she told him his other daughter was dating and sending explicit cellphone images of herself to schoolmates.
“You’re worried about one daughter, but your other daughter is spreading her legs and shining the light of Islam to the rest of the world, to the boys at school,” Bagherzadeh said, according to a transcript.
Nadia Irsan, 33, faces charges of stalking connected to the deaths and is accused of helping her father orchestrate the two shootings.