Muzzammil “Mo” Hassan, the Orchard Park man charged in the stabbing and decapitation of his wife in February 2009, said last week that he is an honest man prepared to speak the truth.
And the truth, he said, is that he is the real victim.
Contrary to the pile of evidence and witness corroboration that he mentally tormented and physically beat his wife over a period of years, he said, the truth is that he was the one “emotionally tortured” by his outwardly kind and sweet-natured wife, Aasiya Zubair Hassan.
Few believe him, however.
“It, to me, sounds like a desperate attempt by a person who does not have a credible defense,” said Suzanne Tomkins, the clinical professor at the University at Buffalo Law School who runs a domestic violence law clinic.
In brief conversations with The News at the Erie County Holding Center last week, Hassan said that immediately after his wife was killed, he could have fled the country.
“I could have gone to Toronto, taken a direct flight to Pakistan, and I speak the language fluently,” he said.
Instead, he said he chose to turn himself in and adhere to Gandhi’s principle of “satyagraha” — to seek the truth without selfish interests.
The former banker and head of an Islam-oriented cable network faces a murder trial in September. Erie County Judge Thomas P. Franczyk recently ruled that Hassan’s statement from Feb. 12, 2009, that he just killed his wife, is admissible as evidence.
Hassan has spared no effort in promoting his own version of events and taking control of his own case. He has sent The News a dozen handwritten letters — two under the false authorship of his mother — and fired two of his lawyers since his incarceration.
A News reporter met with Hassan and discussed the possibility of conducting an extensive interview with him in the future, in the presence of his lawyer.
Hassan said he would agree to an extended interview on two main conditions: That he determines when and where the story would run and that he would be the only person interviewed for it.
The Buffalo News refused those terms, quoting instead from last week’s meetings and his letters.
Hassan has never publicly denied killing his wife. Instead, he has suggested he will build his court defense on the grounds that as a long-abused spouse, he finally snapped and killed his wife in a desperate bid to end the psychological abuse inflicted upon him.
He stated last week that in cases where battered women kill their abuser, they “overkill” them — shooting the abuser five times instead of once, for example. And they rarely try to run or hide after the homicide, he said, clearly attempting to draw parallels to his own case.
Police have accused Hassan of repeatly stabbing, then beheading his wife after meeting with her alone in their Orchard Park television studio.
Aasiya had filed for divorce a week before her death and told others she feared for her safety. She had filed multiple police complaints, received orders of protection, produced photos of her injuries, and signed an extensive divorce affidavit attesting to her trauma. Her husband was also investigated by Child Protective Services.
Hassan, however, contends he is the one who suffered immense psychological abuse and humiliation during his seven-year marriage to a wife who publicly nurtured a false image as a kinder and more sympathetic woman.
“All abuse happens behind closed doors, thus NO witnesses,” Hassan stated in his most recent letter. “All abuse is psychological, emotional wounds are not visible, thus NO evidence. ... What a perfect crime! Only the poorly trained abusers use physical violence and get caught, for physical abuse leaves behind evidence.”
Domestic violence advocates are unimpressed by Hassan’s defense.
And those who work locally with abusers and victims also say it’s not uncommon for a perpetrator to assume the opposite role.
Greg White, program director for Catholic Charities Domestic Violence for Men, said he’s been involved with the program since 1988 and routinely sees instances where men charged with a domestic violence crime claim to be abused.
“We do see men … that even though they are mandated to us through the criminal justice system and have been found to be guilty to some degree, still claim to be victims themselves,” White said. “Whether that’s true or not, that is often a tactic men use in the program to not take responsibility.”
Speaking in a polite and amiable tone, Hassan said he’s currently housed in a medical ward at the Erie County Holding Center and likes the “dormitory-style” setting and the food.
Despite a letter to The News last month complaining at length about his treatment at the Holding Center, he told a reporter last week, “Compared to the emotional torture I lived with in my seven years of marriage, this place is paradise.”
Says police laughed at him
Many of Hassan’s letters include hand-drawn charts chronicling the “spiral of abuse” and other abuse statistics and theories, or articles about battered men.
He stated that he repeatedly tried to get his wife to face the fact that she needed psychological help, without success, and that his claims of abuse were dismissed by local domestic violence victim advocates because he was a man subjected to “sexist ideology.”
“Anytime I sought outside help, I got falsely accused of sexual misconduct or physical abuse — more than 12+ police reports, each in response to my reaching out for help from counselors, my family or her family,” he stated.
He said he sought help from more than two dozen domestic violence professionals in Erie County but was told he was “blaming the victim,” or “in denial.” He said last week that when he told an Orchard Park police officer at his home in 2006 that his wife was abusing him, the officer laughed in his face.
But those familiar with the Hassan case say Hassan’s profile fits all the markers for an abuser, not a victim.
In his defense, Hassan said he has more than 2,000 e-mails between himself and his wife dating back to 2000 showing Aasiya to be an emotionally unstable, abusive and manipulative woman who came from a troubled family. He offered to share some of the e-mails if The News agreed to his terms.
Aasiya stated in her divorce papers that in December 2007, when a child-neglect proceeding was pending against Hassan, he forced her to tell him her e-mail password, then logged into her account and sent out messages pretending to be her.
Hassan denied the charge, saying that if he was capable of forcing his wife to hand over her e-mail account password, why wasn’t he able to require her to get the psychological counseling that experts “agreed” she needed during their years of marriage?
Recurring theme
He also denied allegations that he not only abused Aasiya, his third wife, but also his second wife by arranged marriage, Sadia Hussain Hassan. They divorced after 13 months with the intervention of the Muslim community in Rochester.
He said he took out an order of protection against his second wife and eventually divorced her because she, too, was abusing him, not the other way around.
“I moved out of home with Sadia Hussain due to her extreme abuse,” he wrote. “She continued her abuse with letters to M&T Bank CEO [Hassan’s former employer]. The bank helped me get a protection order against her. And the court granted me divorce on the grounds of cruel and inhuman treatment by Sadia.”
Those who assisted with his second wife’s divorce said that while Hassan attempted to force Sadia to say she abused him in divorce proceedings by holding her immigration status over her, she refused.