Iraqi mother beaten to death in US

Shaima Alawadi, a mother of five children ranging in age from 8 to 17, was found unconscious by her eldest daughter on the dining room floor of her home in the city of El Cajon in San Diego County, California on Wednesday.

Alawadi was taken to the hospital and put on life support, but she was taken off life support around 3 p.m. Saturday.

“Our understanding is that she was beaten and she was hit with some kind of a tool about 8 times in the head. She was knocked on the floor and was found in a pool of blood,” said Hanif Mohebi, the director of the San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

There is a large Iraqi population in El Cajon, Mohebi said, and its members often face “discriminatory hate incidents.”

“A week ago they left a letter saying this is our country not yours you terrorist, and so my mom ignored that thinking it was just kids playing a prank,” Alawadi’s daughter, Fatima Al Himidi said. “But the day they hit her, they left another note again, and it said the same thing.”

“A hate crime is one of the possibilities, and we will be looking at that,” El Cajon police Lieutenant Mark Coit said. “We don’t want to focus on only one issue and miss something else.”

Iraq’s foreign minister said on Monday that Alawadi’s body will be flown to Baghdad while lawmakers across Iraq demanded a thorough investigation.

“The government has ordered to transport her body from California to Baghdad,” Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said.

“We deplore this hideous crime that took place in a country that calls itself the land of democracy, freedoms and freedom of religious. The parliament will take a serious position on this. Iraqi Foreign Affairs Ministry must now officially ask the US Embassy and the Department of State for more details on this hideous crime,” said Aliyah Nisayef, a female Iraqi lawmaker.

Hayder Al-Zayadi, a family friend, told the Free-Press that Alawadi moved to the United States in 1993 with her family and was part of a wave of Shia Muslim refugees who fled to Michigan after Saddam Hussein cracked down on an uprising in 1991.

After living in Dearborn for a few years, she moved to the San Diego area in 1996, graduated from high school and became a housewife raising five children, Al-Zayadi said.

HMV/AZ/HGH

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