America
Thousands attend funeral of Muslim students killed in US
Washington, Feb 13
Thousands of people
attended the funeral of three Muslim students who were shot dead in an
apartment near the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill aspolice continued investigating the motive for the killings.
Mohammed
Abu-Salha, father of two of the victims, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21,
and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, told reporters that the
incident, which has shaken this small community near Raleigh, was a hate
crime motivated by religion.
"He hates us for what we are and
how we look," he quoted his daughter as saying about alleged killer
Craig Stephen Hicks who turned himself in to the police after killing
Deah Barakat, 23, and the two women Tuesday.
In a statement
broadcast by local TV channel WRAL, Suzanne Barakat, Deah's sister, who
like the two slain sisters also wears a headscarf and traditional Arab
garb, urged the authorities to investigate the "senseless and heinous
murders".
Barakat, a Syrian-American and second-year dental
student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Yusor
Mohammad were married two-and-a-half months ago, his sister said.
Meanwhile,
Hicks' wife, Karen has said that her husband had parking disputes with
several neighbours while his lawyer, Rob Maitland, said that the
shooting "had nothing to do with religion... but was in fact related to
the long-standing parking disputes".
The police, who have asked
the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to step in, said that it was
still probing the motive behind the killings to determine if it was hate
motivated but that it appeared to have been sparked by the parking
dispute.
More than 5,000 people attended the prayer service
Thursday in honour of the victims which began in a mosque and had to be
moved to an athletic field at North Carolina State University in Raleigh
due to the huge turnout.
Besides Mohammed Abu-Salha, Chapel Hill
police Chief Chris Blue also spoke at the funeral saying that an
exhaustive investigation was being carried out into the incident.
Meanwhile,
the Council on American-Islamic Relations called on law enforcement
authorities to address speculation about a possible bias motive in the
case, given the nature of the crime.