Jury selection for the trial of a father accused of “honour killing” his two daughters is set to begin Monday.
Prosecutors said that nearly fifteen years after the gruesome killings of Amina Said, 18, and Sarah Said, 17, their father, 65-year-old Yaser Said, will face justice for their killings, as per Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
On New Year’s Eve 2008, Mr Said drove the girls to a hotel parking lot in Irving, Texas, and allegedly shot them multiple times inside his taxicab, court documents show. One of the girls, later determined by the FBI to be Sarah, called 911 and told the operator that she had been shot by her father.
Police could not locate the girls until a call was made by a witness reporting a suspicious vehicle outside of the hotel. The girls were found dead inside the vehicle an hour after the 911 call.
Prosecutors say Mr Said went on to flee authorities. He was listed as one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted in 2014.
Mr Said was on the run for twelve years until he was arrested in August 2020, after police followed a tip from a maintenance worker in 2017.
He had been living in an apartment rented by his son, Islam Yaser-Abdel Said, 32. As authorities closed in, Mr Said relocated with the help of his brother Yassein Said, 59, before he was finally arrested in Justin, north of Fort Worth.
Islam Yaser-Abdel Said and Yassein Said were both prosecuted for conspiracy to conceal a person from arrest, concealing a person from arrest and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, the Department of Justice announced last year. They pled guilty and were sentenced to 10 and 12 years in prison, respectively.
According to family members who participated in the documentary “The Price of Honour,” which explores the disturbing family dynamics that led to the killings, Mr Said allegedly murdered his daughters when he found out they had been dating outside of the Muslim religion.
Relatives also allege that Amina and Sarah were physically and emotionally abused by their father.
“He would wake them up them girls in the middle of the night, waving a gun at them, telling them that they had to do as he said or he was going to kill them,” the girls’ great aunt Jill Abplanalp told Crime Watch before Mr Said’s arrest.
Ms Abplanalp also accused Mr Said of sexually abusing his daughters and attempting to arrange a marriage between then-15-year-old Amina and a 47-year-old man when the family visited Egypt.
A criminal complaint obtained by Crime Watch showed that the girls accused their father of sexual abuse when they were 8 and 9, but later recanted their testimony.
Shortly before their deaths, the girls had fled to Oklahoma with their mother because they felt unsafe. They eventually returned to Texas.
Mr Said’s trial was initially set to begin on 30 June, but was postponed by Dallas Judge Chika Anyiam, CBS reported.
He has maintained his innocence and addressed Judge Anyaiam in several letters written from Dallas County Jail, where he has been detained since his 2020 arrest.
“I was not happy about my kids’ dating activity. But, I did not do the killings or any plan to hurt them”, he wrote in one letter, according to local news station WFAA.
Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty and if convicted, Mr Said will be sentenced to life without parole, Star-Telegram reported.
Mr Said’s capital murder trial continues in Criminal District Court No 7 in Dallas.
