April 23,2010 - Daily Star Lebanon Magistrate demands death penalty in domestic killing.doc

BEIRUT: First Investigative Magistrate in south Lebanon Wafiq Barakat demanded the death sentence Thursday for a Lebanese man suspected of beating his 18-year-old wife to death in Mozambique. Moueen D, 38, was arrested in 2009 for allegedly beating his third wife, who is also his cousin, to death while in Mozambique. She had been there for two months and the couple had been married for four months when Moueen kept striking her until she bled and fell to the floor. The suspect works in Mozambique as a used-shoes merchant and he has been married twice: the first time to a 16-year-old woman who divorced him less than a year after their marriage, and the second to a Danish woman with whom he had five children. But his second wife left him in Mozambique in 2009, the same year he married his third wife. Witnesses questioned by the court said Moueen was sadistic and found pleasure in torturing his wives using radio cables or belts and that he was an alcoholic. They also testified that he repeatedly cheated on his wives with Mozambican women, sometimes in front of their own eyes. The suspect’s brother tried to take the third wife back to Lebanon, but when Moueen found out he protested and continued to beat her. – The Daily Star