A teenager died after she was tied up and tossed into a swamp to drown in an honour killing because her Western behaviour disgraced her family, according to prosecutors in the Netherlands.
Ryan Al Najjar’s father, who is suspected of orchestrating the murder, left the country to return to Syria, while her siblings are currently on trial for her murder.
Mohamed, 23, and Muhanad Al Najjar, 25, are charged with taking part in the horrendous crime against their 18-year-old sister, whose body was discovered gagged with her hands bound behind her back, ankles taped together, and submerged in a swamp six days after she disappeared from the family home in Joure.
Their father, Khaled, will be tried in absentia. Ryan vanished on 22 May 2024. A passerby found her body on 28 May in Lelystad, approximately 25 miles north-east of Amsterdam.
Later, investigators discovered her father’s DNA under her fingernails, suggesting that she had resisted.
Dutch prosecutors say Ryan was murdered because she had a boyfriend, behaved in a way her family considered ‘Western,’ and had ‘shamed’ them.
Her murder was officially classified as an honour crime by the Public Prosecution Service.
The brothers, whose trial began yesterday, insist they were not involved and say their father carried out the murder alone.
According to reports, Khaled claimed responsibility and denied his sons’ guilt in two emails to the Dutch daily De Telegraaf. However, the prosecution denied such an assertion.
They claim that the father told his sons to collect Ryan, drive her to a remote area, and throw her into the water while she was gagged and weighed down.
The prosecution says the brothers carried out the plan knowing she would die.
Ryan was protected and under police surveillance before her death, but that ceased before her murder. The reason for the termination of her protection has not been disclosed.
Both brothers were arrested soon after the body was discovered and have remained in custody since then. Their father escaped the country and has not been tracked down.
According to the Dutch current-affairs programme Nieuwsuur, Khaled is believed to be living in northern Syria and has remarried since the killing.
The Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security told the programme that the Netherlands currently has no way to secure his return.
‘The possibilities for criminal cooperation with Syria are currently not available,’ the Ministry said. ‘The criminal justice authorities required for this cooperation are not yet operational in Syria.’
That’s it in a nutshell. We are supposed to coexist with these individuals, who think that Western conduct is so deplorable as to be murderous, but if our way of life is so abhorrent to them, why the hell would they even choose to live in the Western world? And when will our governments see the light? Or is this the evidence that our leaders prefer to ignore?
And if this man has fled to go back to Syria, then it can’t be that dangerous – we are being deceived daily by people entering our countries.
Our governments no longer represent us, so why do we need a government at all?
It was murder, plain and simple; it was not an honour killing, and the father has no concept of what honour is when he flees and leaves his sons to face the music – he’s just a coward!
May all of those other girls who have been viciously and cold-bloodedly killed by the very families that were supposed to love and protect them rest in peace.
In the twenty-first century, this is toxic, out-of-date religious rubbish that the West could do without.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 