Defendant admits lies, denies ‘honor killings’
Immigrant takes stand against his lawyers’ advice
A Jordanian immigrant and fervent Muslim on trial for allegedly plotting two “honor killings” spent Wednesday denying any wrongdoing, admitting to numerous lies but explaining he did not remember the things he said when he was angry.
“I’ve said things that were untrue, but I haven’t told any lies to the jury,” said Ali MahwoodAwad Irsan, who spent almost an entire day on the witness stand in his capital murder trial.
The admission by the 60year-old Irsan was one of many double-edged answers he used
“When I saw what happened to her on the news, that’s the first time I found out anything about her.”
Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan
to defend himself against allegations that he stalked his adult daughter for more than a year in an elaborate scheme to kill the people who helped her convert to Christianity.
“She caused a lot of pain to my family,” Irsan said after he first denied, then acknowledged, that he called his daughter “Black Widow” and “Bitch #2” after she ran away from home. “I was angry. When I get angry I say things that sometimes I don’t remember.”
Testifying in a courtroom packed past capacity with observers, Irsan was the last witness in the five weeks of testimony.
He faces the death penalty if he is convicted for the 2012 deaths of his son-in-law, Coty Beavers, and his daughter’s close friend, Gelareh Bagherzadeh.
He denied being involved with either shooting.
Irsan’s defense team vehemently disagreed with their client’s decision to testify in his own defense, and two hearings were conducted to admonish Irsan before the trial judge.
Irsan, in more than six hours of testimony, seemed generally agitated and sometimes defiant as he lobbed answers at prosecutors.
The case, which spawned worldwide coverage when Irsan was arrested, has not focused on Islam or Irsan’s faith. Prosecutors have focused instead on his heritage as a Jordanian.
However, when he was questioned about his household rules, Irsan often said they were not his rules but rather mandates of Islam.
“We’re Muslims,” he said. “And it’s very important that a girl remain a virgin. That’s how it is with all Muslims. Two billion Muslims will tell you: no sex before marriage.”
On the stand, Irsan depicted himself as a devoted father who was upset when his 23-year-old daughter Nesreen ran away from home. She and her sister, Nadia, were in college together when Nesreen met her future husband Beavers and fell in love in 2011.
“I was proud of them, and I wanted them to be doctors,” Irsan said of his daughters. “I would swear on a stack of Bibles that they were good girls at the time.”
Earlier in the trial, Nesreen Irsan testified she was forbidden to date Christians and her sister threatened to tell their father. She said she ran away from home and moved in with Beavers but went to court to obtain a protective order to stop her family from harassing her.
During emotional testimony, Nesreem said her father had long threatened her that if she dated a Christian, he would put a bullet between her eyes and the eyes of the man she loved.
Irsan admitted Wednesday that he continued to call his daughter and drive around the Beavers home, in violation of the protective order. He said he was worried she was on drugs and making bad decisions.
‘Love them half to death’
He said he loved his 12 children and did everything he could to protect them.
“I love them half to death,” Irsan told jurors as he stroked his salt-and-pepper beard. “I would do anything for them.”
During cross examination, special prosecutor Marie Primm got Irsan to acknowledge that Nesreen, his third daughter, was dubbed “Bitch #2.” His first daughter, Nyla, was nicknamed “Bitch #1” because she ran away from the home years earlier. Primm said Nyla ran away to marry a man of whom Irsan did not approve.
Irsan denied that when Nyla returned home to make amends, he took her to Jordan on false pretenses, drugged her and tried to drown her in a bathtub.
Irsan opened his testimony with a meandering personal history of growing up in Jordan, coming to the United States in 1979 and marrying a Christian woman. The couple had four children.
In the 1990s, he returned to Jordan as a 34-year-old and married a 14-year-old, and they had eight children. That wife, Shmou Ali Alrawabdeh, now 40, is charged with murder and testified against Irsan.
Earlier, Alrawabdeh testified that she went with Irsan and their oldest son, Nasim Irsan, to a Galleria-area condominium to ambush the young medical researcher and activist. She identified Nasim as the triggerman in the shooting.
Asked about Bagherzadeh’s slaying in January 2012 near her parents’ home, Irsan said he had nothing to do with it.
“When I saw what happened to her on the news, that’s the first time I found out anything about her,” he told the jury.
However, Irsan acknowledged that he spoke to the Iranian activist on the phone before her death but said he did not know who she was, other than a friend of his daughter’s.
He testified that they argued on the phone and he called her an “Indian witch.”
On his ‘hit list’?
Other witnesses testified that he called her “Iranian bitch,” and put her on his “hit list” with the Beavers family and his daughter Nesreen.
During his testimony, Irsan worked to cast doubt on his son, Nasim, alleging his son was selling drugs and tried to poison him.
“And were there several incidents?” defense attorney Allen Tanner asked.
“Incidents where Nasim tried to poison me with an overdose of my medicine,” Irsan replied.
Nasim Irsan, 24, was also arrested in the two slayings and is in the Harris County Jail facing charges of capital murder.
Closing arguments in the trial, in state District Judge Jan Krocker’s court, are expected to start Thursday afternoon.
If Irsan is convicted of capital murder, the trial would move to a punishment phase, in which Irsan would either be sentenced to life in prison without parole or the death penalty.