Examiner.com

OCTOBER 22, 2012 - BY: RICHARD MARCIL

(Mt. Clemens, MI) A Muslim man from Minnesota, who police say followed his step-daughter to Michigan to kill her in an "Honor Killing," has been found guilty by a jury.
Rahim Alfetlawi, 47, was convicted Friday of first-degree premeditated murder by a Macomb County Circuit Court jury. He is scheduled to be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole on November 15th.

Alfetlawi was charged in the death of his 20-year-old stepdaughter, Jessica Mokdad, at her grandmother’s home in Warren, MI, in April 2011.

A conservative Muslim, he told police the gun accidentally went off when he pulled it out, but prosecutors at his trial proved that he intentionally shot Mokdad in the head. He told police she felt the gun he carried for self-defense when she was hugging him, and that she tried to grab it, but when he tried to stop her the gun accidentally discharged.
Prosecutors have said the motive was rooted in the fact that Alfetlawi had been sexually abusing Mokdad and that she might go public with the assaults.

Anti-Islam activists said her death was an example of an Islamic "Honor Killing" because the step-daughter was “not following customary traditional Muslim ways.”

Alfetlawi, of Coon Rapids, Minn., allegedly shot and killed Jessica Mokdad, 20, at her grandmother’s home in Warren, Mich., a suburb of Detroit.

Alfetlawi allegedly also was angry at Mokdad because she had moved to Michigan; he left his home in the predawn hours of a Saturday morning in April 2011 to drive to Grand Blanc, Mich., to confront Mokdad’s father. But neither Mokdad, who was primarily living in Grand Blanc with her father, nor her dad were there.

Alfetlawi then drove to Warren, MI, where Mokdad had been spending time at her grandmother’s home and allegedly met his stepdaughter there. The grandmother was not home at the time - but when she returned, she found Mokdad lying on a bedroom floor with a gunshot wound to the head.

Alfetlawi, meantime, had voluntarily gone to the nearby police department and stated “I shot someone.”