Parents Sentenced to Death in Killing of Daughter

ST. LOUIS (AP) _ A fundamentalist Muslim couple were sentenced to death Thursday for killing their Westernized teen-age daughter, whose screams for mercy were recorded secretly by the FBI.

Zein Isa, 61, and his wife, Maria, 48, were sentenced to die by injection for the 1989 stabbing death of 16-year-old Tina Isa at the family’s apartment.

The FBI had bugged the apartment, reportedly as part of an investigation into whether Isa was involved with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

″If my father is sent to death because he is a Muslim, then he is proud of himself to die that way,″ screamed the dead girl’s sister, Fatima Isa, after the sentences were handed down by Circuit Judge Charles A. Shaw.

A jury that convicted the couple Oct. 25 had recommended the death penalty. The only alternative was a sentence of life in prison with no parole.

″Culture is no excuse for murder,″ the judge said. ″I see no reason to deviate from the jury’s recommendation.″

Isa, a Palestinian, is a naturalized U.S. citizen, and his wife is Brazilian. Attorneys for the couple said the convictions, which relied heavily on a secretly recorded audio tape of the killing, would be appealed.

″The words given us were censored,″ said Zein Isa’s attorney, Dan Reardon, referring to the tape. ″We heard evidence that damned Zein Isa. They have turned us (the state of Missouri) into a hanging mob.″

The seven-minute tape of the girl’s death on Nov. 6, 1989, was central to the trial. The FBI recorded the killing with electronic bugging devices hidden in the family’s home, though it wasn’t monitoring the tape at the time, authorities said.

Also recorded and introduced as evidence in the trial were telephone conversations in which Isa discussed with his other daughters the rebellious, Westernized behavior of his youngest daughter.

Zein Isa testified in Arabic and through a translator that he stabbed his daughter when she demanded $5,000 and came at him with a kitchen knife.

″When I said, ‘You are going to die tonight,’ she already had the knife in her hand,″ Isa said. ″I then directed the knife toward her to stab her until she fell down. From the first stab, she lost all strength. She fell on her back. Only her feet were moving.″

Some jurors had wept upon hearing the tape of the girl struggling for her life with screams and gasping and moaning. On the tape, Zein Isa shouted, in Arabic: ″Die 3/8 Die quickly 3/8 Die, my daughter, die 3/8″

Maria Isa, who was accused of holding the girl while she was being stabbed, didn’t testify. She wept as the sentences were read.

Their daughter was killed after coming home from her first night of work at a fast-food restaurant.

Witnesses testified that Tina was a popular and accomplished high school student who frequently clashed with her parents and older sisters over her boyfriend, her job and the time she spent away from home.