08.02.2011, 15:40 5913

NY TV boss found guilty of beheading his wife

A New York TV executive has been found guilty of beheading his wife after she had filed for divorce, Kazakhstan Today reports.

Almaty. February 8. Kazakhstan Today - A New York TV executive has been found guilty of beheading his wife after she had filed for divorce, Kazakhstan Today reports.

A New York television executive has been convicted of stabbing his wife to death and beheading her, BBC reported.

A jury found Pakistan-born Muzzammil Hassan guilty of second-degree murder in the 2009 death of Aasiya Hassan six days after she filed for divorce.

Hassan never denied killing her but said she had abused him and that he had acted in self-defence. He served as his own lawyer during the three-week trial.

Hassan, who founded a Muslim-oriented TV network, could face life in prison.

Prosecutors argued Hassan abused his wife and planned the attack in a hallway at Bridges TV, a satellite channel he set up in 2004 in an effort to counter negative portrayals of Muslims following the 9/11 terror attacks.

The Guardian reported he was arrested in 2009 after he walked into a police station in the city of Buffalo, in upstate New York, and told officers his wife was dead. Prosecutor Colleen Curtin Gable said Hassan bought two hunting knives less than an hour before the attack, parked his luxury car out of view at the station and then hid in wait inside. During a 37-second frenzy, he stabbed his wife more than 40 times in the face, back and chest then decapitated her. Surveillance video captured some of the attack inside a darkened hallway.

Hassan, who acted as his own attorney, claimed that he was a battered husband who acted in self-defense, although the prosecution produced plenty of evidence to prove that his wife was the battered one. In a bizarre 2-hour closing statement, he didn't mention the murder but compared himself to Nelson Mandela and said a "religion of patriarchy" had "unleashed a bloodbath on American women because battered men have no legal way out." The jury deliberated for under an hour before finding him guilty.

Mrs Hassan, 37, had filed for divorce after enduring domestic violence, her lawyer told the Buffalo News newspaper in 2009.

The couple had been married for eight years and had two children.

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