Teen who torpedoed arranged marriage nearly honor killing victim

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Ihsan and Zahraa Ali were boiling with rage.

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The Iraqi immigrant couple’s ire was directed at their 17-year-old daughter, who had refused an arranged marriage with a much older man in the old country.

In front of her Olympia, Wash. high school, cops allege her father Ihsan tried to strangle her to death in an honour killing gone awry. The shocking incident was captured by police bodycams.

The unnamed teen sprinted from her home to the school and witnesses watched in horror as her father pounced on her. But when police arrived, the patriarch was more concerned about his pickup truck.

According to the Daily Mail, the father shouted at his wife in Arabic: “Zahraa, Zahraa, come here. Haneen, Zahraa (the eldest daughter), take the car from them and drive it away so they don’t steal it. They took the car! They’re going to steal it! The car… they’ll steal it!”

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Ali, 44, is charged with attempted murder, attempted kidnapping, and assault in the Oct. 18, 2024 attack.

The victim’s 16-year-old boyfriend, along with a passerby and classmates, fought off the dad and saved the girl’s life.

Ihsan told cops: “I have nothing to say.”

The Mail reports that eldest daughter Haneen, 21, and wife Zahraa Subhi Mohsin Ali, 40, were involved in the fracas. Zahraa was also charged with attempted murder but Haneen is not charged with a crime

The shaken teen and her boyfriend, who was punched in the face while defending her, both suffered numerous injuries. On the video, one of the students is heard saying, “He was trying to kill her.”

Elder sister Haneen, however, took a different view.

She claims on the video: “My sister ran away, my mom tried to get her to talk with her … but there was this guy (the boyfriend) who held her, really aggressive. They’re in there (gestured to the school), they ran away inside.”

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As the hubby was dragged to his feet by cops, his wife is heard hysterically wailing and crying. At this point, officers were unaware that the mother had also allegedly tried to strangle her daughter to death.

Reports said the couple had plotted to pack the rebellious girl onto a plane back to Iraq. They had reported the teen as a runaway and even confronted her boyfriend’s dad.

Daughter Haneen insisted her parents did nothing wrong and that some sinister bystander dared to push her parents. She then freaked out.

“What do I do now? What do you want me to do? Who’s gonna help?” she wailed. “No, it’s not fine, how is this fine? How can you say that?”

Cops convinced Haneen to take her mother home.

But as the incident fizzled out, officers had no idea that Zahraa had allegedly attempted to murder the girl just four days previous. Mom and sister then scoured the community looking for the girl, who was in hiding.

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Soon, Zahraa would also allegedly try to go on the run to Canada.

Victor Barnes — the boyfriend’s dad — said Zahraa had fled to the Canadian border after prosecutors moved to charge her along with Ihsan. He claimed Zahraa drove her youngest children — boys aged five and three — into Canada and dropped them off with an uncle who lives here.

She then returned to Washington before trying to cross into Canada a second time. She was arrested on her second attempt.

Barnes said of Ihsan Ali: “He’s an abusive man. So they just didn’t tell him because … they may think he’ll fly off the handle and do something crazy like he did. They wanted to seclude her and during this period of time, that’s when he was threatening to kill her and was starving her and crazy, crazy stuff.

“She runs away from home because they wanted to fly her out of the country that day — she’s afraid. She shows up at the school and my son’s class and the teacher helps her because she looks very malnourished.”

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun

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