The prosecutor in Houston has dismissed murder charges against the Jordanian man accused of killing Iranian-American Gelareh Ba-gherzadeh three years ago but plans to file other, as yet unspecified new charges against the man.
“We’ve dismissed the murder charges but more charges will be coming,” Jeff McShan, spokesman for the Harris County District Attorney’s office, said last Thursday, declining to offer more details.
This is the latest twist in a bizarre case that has spurred conspiracy theories about Iranian government involvement or that Bagherzadeh, a 30-year-old Christian convert, was gunned down in an honor killing outside her parents’ townhouse.
Her slaying carried the highest Crime Stoppers reward in history—$200,000—but for two years the case languished.
Then, last May, federal investigators arrested the father of one of Bagherzadeh’s closest friends, accusing Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan, 57, and his wife and daughter of fraud—lying to get monthly Social Security payments and food stamps.
Within hours, Houston police appeared on the scene and charged Irsan with Bagher-zadeh’s murder.
He was accused of waiting outside her family’s home and then shooting her dead behind the wheel as she drove up and approached the garage in January 2012.
Why the murder charges are now being dropped and what new charges will be filed remains a mystery.
The January 2012 shooting captured considerable attention because Bagherzadeh was an outspoken critic of the Iranian regime, fueling widespread speculation that Tehran might be involved. She had often marched in protests in Houston against the 2009 presidential election in Iran.
But with the charges filed against Irsan it appeared Bagherzadeh’s conversion from Islam to Christianity might have inspired the killing.
Eleven months after Ba-gherzadeh’s slaying, Irsan’s son-in-law, Coty Beavers, was shot to death in the apartment he shared with Irsan’s daughter. She’d filed a protective order against her father, and relatives have said she was afraid of him. Federal prosecutors last year named Irsan in court as a suspect in Beavers’ killing, but he has not yet been charged.
Relatives have said the conservative Muslim, who home-schooled his children, was furious that his daughter, Nesreen, defied his orders and married Beavers, a Christian, in 2011. They said he blamed the marriage not only on Beavers but also Bagherzadeh, a close friend of his daughter, whom Irsan saw as too “Westernized.”
Irsan had previously killed yet another son-in-law, another person relatives said Irsan detested. In September 1999, Irsan killed Amjad Alidam with a 12-gauge shotgun. Irsan claimed his 29-year-old son-in-law was abusing his daughter and had threatened him and his family, according to the Houston Chronicle’s archives.
After the killing, relatives said that daughter, Nasemah, fled to Jordan. They said she later returned to the United States and still fears her father.
But another daughter subsequently told police Alidam’s death was staged. According to a search warrant obtained by KHOU TV News in Houston, Nesreen Irsan told investigators her father lured Alidam to the family’s home under false pretenses and then shot Alidam with a shotgun.
Nesreen Irsan said her father then fired a pistol shot into the wall and placed the pistol near Alidam’s body, “to make it appear that he threatened and fired at Irsan first.”
At the time, the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office did not charge Irsan because the shooting appeared to be in self-defense. A grand jury reviewed the case, but did not indict Irsan and “the investigation was suspended pending the receipt of additional information,” according to a letter from the district attorney’s office.
In a letter sent to the state Attorney General’s office last summer, requesting permission to withhold information about the 1999 killing, the district attorney said the sheriff had reopened the investigation, the Chronicle reported.
For the families of Bagher-zadeh and Beavers, the reopened investigation is little solace. “Had they done this in the first place, Coty and Gelareh would probably still be alive,” said Cory Beavers, the 30-year-old identical twin of Coty Beavers and boyfriend of Bagherzadeh. “It’s something that has frustrated us for a long time,” he said last summer.
Irsan, his 37-year-old wife, Shmou Ali Alrawabdeh, and his 30-year-old daughter, Nadia Irsan, also are accused of defrauding the government of Social Security, food stamps and other payments for nearly 20 years in a separate federal case. Murder is a state crime, not a federal crime. And Bagherzadeh and Alidam were killed in different Texas counties so two different prosecutors are involved.
Furthermore, two of Irsan’s sons faced criminal charges of their own. KHOU reported that detectives arrested them on drug charges. Nile Irsan and Nasim Irsan were accused of trying to sneak drugs to their dad behind bars after his arrest in the Ba-gherzadeh case.
Law enforcement sources told KHOU that the brothers bought food out of a vending machine in the detention center where their father was being held. They then allegedly put the drugs in the food and tried to sneak the food to their father.