New details are emerging in what Peoria Police are calling an “honor killing.”
The victim’s father may already be behind bars, but reports are also pointing fingers at other family members.
Peoria Police Spokesman Mike Tellef confirmed accused killer Faleh Almaleki told his wife in a recorded phone conversation from jail that, “Iraqis are nothing without their honor.”
Almaleki is accused of running down his 20-year-old daughter Noor and her boyfriend’s mother in a parking lot last October because he thought she was “too Western.”
Mohamed El-Shakawy served as a go-between for the Almaleki family and police, after Faleh Almaleki fled the scene and made his way to Mexico.
“It is nothing but a heinous crime, what he did,” said El-Shakawy. “It has nothing to do with Islam, it has nothing to do with honor. It actually brought shame to the family, not honor.”
Police say Noor’s brother Ali mentioned to them that the aspiring model, who left her arranged marriage to a cousin in Iraq to live with her boyfriend in the Valley, brought shame on the family.
El-Shakawy believes Almaleki ran the women down with his jeep in a fit of rage.
“He did not get the blessing from the family,” said El-Shakawy. “It’s not like something he had planned.”
But police doubt that. They say a cousin sent Almaleki money while he was a fugitive, and that his son and wife picked up prescriptions for him before he left the country.
At the time, Noor was clinging to life in the hospital.
“They wanted to know if she was still in danger, if it was something that a member of the family would go and finish the job,” said El-Shakawy.
El-Shakawy advised the family to tell police where Almaleki was, but said they denied knowing anything about the crime or his whereabouts.
Police say Almaleki himself admitted to investigators that his family had helped him.
“I offered my help,” said El-Shakawy. “If they go and tell me where he’s at, I will go and take him and walk with him to the police department and get him to surrender himself.”
But Almaleki did not surrender. Instead, he boarded a plane from Mexico City to London, where he was arrested and extradited back to the Valley.
He is now behind bars, awaiting trial, but will not face the death penalty.
The investigation is ongoing, and none of his family members have been charged with a crime.