Muslim Couple Sentenced to Die for Killing Daughter

A fundamentalist Muslim couple were sentenced to death Thursday for killing their teen-age daughter, whose screams for mercy were recorded secretly by the FBI.

Zein Isa, 61, and his wife, Maria, 48, were sentenced to die by injection for the 1989 stabbing death of 16-year-old Tina Isa at the family’s apartment.

The FBI had bugged the apartment, reportedly as part of an investigation into whether Zein Isa was involved with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

“If my father is sent to death because he is a Muslim, then he is proud of himself to die that way,” screamed the dead girl’s sister, Fatima Isa, after the sentences were handed down by Circuit Judge Charles A. Shaw.

A jury that convicted the couple Oct. 25 had recommended the death penalty.

“Culture is no excuse for murder,” the judge said. “I see no reason to deviate from the jury’s recommendation.”

The seven-minute tape of the girl’s death on Nov. 6, 1989, was central to the trial. The FBI recorded the killing with electronic bugging devices hidden in the family’s home, although it was not monitoring the tape at the time, authorities said.

Also recorded and introduced as evidence in the trial were telephone conversations in which Isa discussed with his other daughters the rebellious, Westernized behavior of his youngest daughter.

Zein Isa testified that he stabbed his daughter when she demanded $5,000 and approached him with a kitchen knife.

Some jurors wept upon hearing the tape of the girl struggling for her life with screams, gasping and moaning. On the tape, Zein Isa shouted, in Arabic: “Die! Die quickly! Die, my daughter, die!”

Maria Isa was accused of holding the girl while she was stabbed.