Mick Hartley

Meanwhile, in Pakistan:

The Associated Press has released a positively chilling video interview with a Pakistani man who killed his teenage sister in cold blood because she had defied his orders and married a Christian man. In the interview, conducted in a jailhouse in Lahore, Pakistan, Mubeen Rajhu, his hands in shackles, talks about the motive behind his crime. In August, he walked into the kitchen of his family’s home carrying a pistol and, with his mother and another sister looking on, raised the gun and fired a single shot into his sister Tasleem’s head, killing her. She was 18.

“I could not let it go. It was all I could think about. I had to kill her,” Rajhu told the AP. “There was no choice. There was no yelling, no shouting. I just shot her dead.”

How he reached a decision to kill his sister is nearly as sad and disturbing as is his carrying out the brutal crime. According to the AP, Rajhu had always loved his little sister. She’d been a devout Muslim, he said. But when Rajhu’s co-workers at the steel mill where he worked in Lahore started seeing Tasleem around town with a Christian man, the bullying began — bullying that they freely and gleefully admit took place and amused them. They used to mock Rajhu, telling him his sister keeping company with a Christian was unacceptable. Ali Raza, one of Rajhu’s co-workers, laughed about how easy it was to get Rajhu riled up. “He used to tell us, ‘If you don’t stop, I will kill myself. Stop!'” Raza said. “The guys here told him, ‘It would be better to kill your sister,'” Raza recalled.

Sure enough Rajhu purchased a gun. Six days later he killed Tasleem. But he claims his sister had it coming. He told her on numerous occasions that she was bringing dishonor to the family by fraternizing with a Christian. Moreover, he made her swear on the Koran that she would never marry the Christian man. Tasleem swore that she wouldn’t marry him, Rajhu, who believes he’s about 24 years old, said. “I told her I would have no face to show at the mill, to show to my neighbors, so don’t do it. Don’t do it. But she wouldn’t listen,” he said. Then, he found out she had defied him and married the man. The shame he felt and was bound to be subjected to at work was too much to bear.

Nearly two months later, Rajhu’s father is shattered by what has transpired. But, in yet another shocking turn in this tragic story, it’s his slain daughter whom he blames for destroying his family — not the son who took her life. “My family is destroyed,” Rajhu’s father told the AP. “Everything is destroyed only because of this shameful girl. Even after death I am destroyed because of her.” Others in the poor neighborhood along a section of northern Lahore sympathize with the father — and lionize Rajhu.

“I am proud of this man,” Babar Ali, a neighbor, said. “He has done the right thing to kill her. When the news spreads, they will praise this man.”

Here's the AP story.