Muslim TV channel owner charged with killing wife

A woman who was closely related to my niece’s in-laws and who belonged to my community (Memons) was murdered by her husband, who slit her throat and surrendered to the police. As reported by Times Online, Muzzamil Hassan, 44, walked into a police station last Thursday evening (February 12, 2009) and told detectives that 37-year-old Aasiya Zubair Hassan's body was lying at the Bridges TV station where they both worked.
"He came into the police station at 6.20pm and told us that she was dead," said Andrew Benz, the police chief in Orchard Park, a suburb of Buffalo in New York state.
Officers went to the headquarters of Bridges TV and found Mrs Hassan lying decapitated in a hallway, having apparently died that afternoon. Police are still hunting for a murder weapon, according to reports in The Buffalo News.
Mrs Hassan's lawyer said that she had recently filed for divorce from her husband after eight years of marriage, citing previous incidents of domestic violence.
According to the victim’s family, the killer had married once before marrying their daughter and already had two children from the first marriage. They had got to know each other through the internet. The murdered woman was the mother of two kids.
The murderer is the chief executive officer of the satellite-distributed news and opinion channel that he and his wife set up in 2004 to portray Muslims in a more positive light. He graduated magna cum laude with an MBA from the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester in 1996. In a 2005 interview with The Buffalo News, he said that the idea for the TV station was sparked two years earlier when the couple heard derogatory remarks about American Muslims on a radio talk show.