Wife testifies against husband in 'honor killings' trial punishment phase

HOUSTON (FOX 26) - According to testimony, Ali Irsan is a man who tortured people and even killed long before last week when he was found guilty of the so-called "honor killings" of his daughter’s Christian husband and friend. Prosecutors call Irsan a Muslim extremist. He could now be sentenced to death after being found guilty of the Capital Murders of Gelareh Bagherzadeh and Coty Beavers. 

The woman who was once Ali Irsan’s child bride was on the stand all afternoon testifying against him. Shmou Alrawabdeh, who married Irsan when she was 14 and he was 34, is telling a horrific story of unbelievable abuse at the hands of her husband, who she says would beat her with his fist, with a board, would tie her hands and feet and tase her with a taser.

She also told jurors Irsan would regularly beat the children, mostly with a cane he kept when he went to the doctor, and she says he pretended to be disabled to fraudulently get social security and food stamps. She also said he received a $250,000 insurance settlement after a burglary scam and that he never had a job.

Irsan has 12 kids -- four with his first wife who escaped to Minneapolis after Irsan married Shmou and Shmou had eight kids with him. She says her last baby was born in 2005 after Irsan punched her in the stomach until she began bleeding and went into labor.

Even as horrific as all of that is, Shmou told jurors in 1999 her husband killed his oldest daughter Nassima's husband in their Montgomery County home and got away with it after he planted a gun in the man’s hand and claimed self defense. She says after Irsan shot the man whom he didn’t approve of because the husband was Shia Muslim and he’s Sunni, she says he told her to make him coffee, he drank some, spit on the man, had his brother punch her in the eye to pretend the dead man did it, then called 911. 

Shmou testified her husband took Nassima to Jordan where he first tried to drown his daughter, but she fought him off and he left her there to be a servant.

Beavers and Bagherzadeh were both Christian. The two were killed 11 months apart in 2012 after Nesreen, who testified against her father this morning, converted to Christianity. Shmou says her husband killed them to restore honor to his name. The sentencing phase of the Irsan trial is expected to last a few more days.