Afghan Women Self-Immolation Growing

Among the most hopeless people on the face of the earth are Muslim woman - everywhere. And one of the countries plagued by self-immolation or suicide by fire, is Afghanistan, where women are killing themselves in record numbers, or at least trying...women who cannot deal with divorce because they lose their children. Death is sometimes better.

Dr. Sayed Naim Alemi, director of the regional hospital in Herat, said that there have been 85 cases of attempted suicide at his hospital alone over the past six months, double the number from previous years. Of those, 57 women succeeded in taking their own lives.

Their marriages are arranged and the father's treat their daughters like a puppy litter, but with less benevolence. On weekends here in Tulsa, I see dog breeders on the side of our busy 71st Street with a little fenced area on the grass, full of puppies. We can stop and pick out our puppy. Some are giveaways. Some we pay for. Same with Muslim fathers in Islamic countries: Who wants my daughters? And which one do you want? Please, if you are a Muslim man, don't bother explaining the sacred Muslim marriage to me.

Holger Awakens recently posted following story from RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan), which is generally hyper-critical of the U.S., but doesn't shy from the issue of women abused and murdered by their husbands and fathers:  RAWA condemns the U.S:

“Neither the occupiers! Nor the bestial Taliban and the criminal Northern Alliance; long live a free and democratic Afghanistan!”

I don't think there anything on the RAWA site explaining how these women will bring about a "free and democratic Afghanistan." Allah certainly isn't helping.

• Every 30 minutes, an Afghan woman dies during childbirth
• 87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate
• 30 percent of girls have access to education in Afghanistan
• 1 in every 3 Afghan women experience physical, psychological or sexual violence
• 44 years is the average life expectancy rate for women in Afghanistan
• 70 to 80 percent of women face forced marriages in Afghanistan

Source: AfghanistanOnline

Poverty and illiteracy add to the hopelessness of domestic violence meted out by father's, brothers, uncles and husbands. For Afghan women, there is little to no education. Often they are no allowed to work outside the home.

 Support the women of Islam by knowing the truth. Sometimes being set on fire comes not from your own hand, but by your husband's. See this teenager who attempted suicide after thinking she broke her husband's television; and this 20 year old who lived but lost her eyelids, and Aisha whose husband sliced off her nose and ears.

*****

Afghan Muslim Women Hit the Wall of Abuse, 67 Cases of Setting Themselves on Fire Just This Year
Holger Awakens, originally published October 9, 2010

This article, from RAWA News, details a horrific trend in Afghanistan where 67 muslim women have seen such abuse and hopelessness in their lives that they have tried to commit suicide by setting themselves on fire.

From the article:

"I was crazy angry at that time. I wanted to kill myself and I thought that it would be a quick death," said the 20-year-old who has been a second wife for five years. "But it wasn't."

As shocking and gruesome as the practice is, self-immolation is not unusual among young women in Afghanistan, where women are often seen and treated as the property of men.

Some experts, such as Dibi Hareer of the small German-based charity Medicale Mondiale, say the phenomenon is growing, the reasons embedded in "Afghan customs and traditions that are stronger than laws".

"She was found 15 days after setting herself alight. She was found by accident by a human rights group. Her brother-in-law and father-in-law had raped her, so she wanted to kill herself," Jalalai said.

Many of the women who do make it to hospital discharge themselves after a few days, he said, inviting infection that probably kills them later.

The misery, the death, the destruction and the horror of islam just keeps churning away across this world ...ironically at the same time that there is the big push here in the West for "understanding" and "tolerance" and "building bridges."

We have a man such as Geert Wilders who has simply brought the message of truth about Islam to the Western world - he has simply tried to warn us, show us the types of things this article shows and at this very moment, Wilders is fighting to keep himself out of prison in his home country of the Netherlands.

I've said it before...if you are a muslim woman in childbirth and at that moment your child enters the world and you discover that you have a daughter...you must begin to weep....not in joy but in fear of what your newborn baby girl will endure here on Earth.

Desperation drives abused Afghan women to death by fire
HERAT, Afghanistan — In the refined, cultured and historic Afghan city of Herat, 67 young women have been admitted to the main hospital this year after setting themselves on fire.

Halima is the most recent. She arrived earlier this month with third-degree burns to 30 percent of her body after dousing herself in diesel oil and setting it alight during a family argument.

Her torso and one of her arms -- the one that did not pour the oil -- are swaddled in thick bandages, the charred and blackened fingers on her right hand poking through. Every now and then she winces in pain.

It had been a furious row, she said, with her husband's first wife, whom she accused of supplying him with opium.

"I was crazy angry at that time. I wanted to kill myself and I thought that it would be a quick death," said the 20-year-old who has been a second wife for five years. "But it wasn't."

As shocking and gruesome as the practice is, self-immolation is not unusual among young women in Afghanistan, where women are often seen and treated as the property of men.

Some experts, such as Dibi Hareer of the small German-based charity Medicale Mondiale, say the phenomenon is growing, the reasons embedded in "Afghan customs and traditions that are stronger than laws".

At Herat General Hospital's burns unit, Dr Aref Jalali has been keeping statistics on self-immolation since about 2002, and said he admits eight to ten cases of self-immolation a month. In June, he said, there were 20.

"Of the 67 cases so far this year, 33 died, 15 discharged themselves from the hospital and never came back, and the others are fine," he told AFP while standing at Halima's bedside.

"It might be that there are five to 10 cases a month of young women setting themselves on fire that we never see, they are a long way from the city and so they cannot get here in time to get life-saving treatment.

"Or it could be that they are not helped by their families, they are just left to die," he said, relating the case of one young woman who was found locked in a barn weeks after attempting self-immolation.

"She was found 15 days after setting herself alight. She was found by accident by a human rights group. Her brother-in-law and father-in-law had raped her, so she wanted to kill herself," Jalalai said.

Many of the women who do make it to hospital discharge themselves after a few days, he said, inviting infection that probably kills them later.

Since 2007, Jalali has seen between 50 and 95 cases of self-immolation a year, but numbers are up 40 percent this year, he said, adding: "I believe the real number is much higher than the cases we see but there is no strategy for dealing with this phenomenon."

Jalali has set up a research foundation called Nejat, meaning rescue in Dari, which he hopes will gather enough information to be able to help put a stop to what he calls a "horrifying trend".

-- Traditions stronger than laws --

Afghanistan's lack of social development is blamed for the way women are treated, with much of the horror attributed to tradition and religion.

The Muslim country is pious and conservative and the spread of the Taliban's hardline Islamist insurgency has seen more women retreat behind all-enveloping burqas amid objections to plans by President Hamid Karzai to open peace talks.

There has been little improvement in the lot of women in rural areas despite the introduction of constitutional rights after the Taliban's brutal regime was overthrown in late 2001.

Afghanistan remains a society mired in misogyny, with most women confined to their homes, unsocialised and uneducated, with no control over their lives.

"Forced marriages lead to problems, young women married to old men, sold, swapped for sheep or even opium. Sometimes girls are engaged as babies to baby boys -- this is common outside the cities and it leads to some of the problems of the women who come in here," Jalali said.

"Women are seen as chattels, they are treated as animals, when they are at home they face constant discrimination and when they are forced into underage marriages nothing changes.

"They feel more pressure from their abusive husbands and equally from women, mainly mothers-in-law. They sometimes go to mullahs and community councils to ask for help, but even there they face humiliation and abuse," he said.

"They finally set themselves on fire in an act of utter desperation."

The vast majority of the women he sees are aged between 15 and 25 years old, he said, up to 85 percent of them impoverished, illiterate and "unable to deal with problems within their families".

Their desperate cry for help rarely results in any improvement in their lives and if they survive can lead to even more problems, Jalali said.

"They have terrible scarring, the situation at home rarely changes, police investigate and they don't tell the truth, saying their burns are from an accident."

Sometimes, the women will appeal to the village elders, whose councils are called "shuras," for mediation, but tradition rules and little changes.

"The shuras often tell them to go back to their homes, which doesn't deal with, let alone overcome any of the problems that led to this situation in the first place," Jalali said.

In an effort at least to draw attention to the issue, Afghanistan's public health ministry has declared October 10 Self-Immolation Day.

Ghulam Sakhi Kargar Noor Ogholi, ministry spokesman, said the idea was to involve schools and mosques in a public information campaign to stop the practice that "takes the lives of hundreds of women".

For Jalali, education is the key to change.

"No forced marriages," he said emphatically.

"We must start in the schools, we must use the media and the mullahs at the mosques to get the message across. We need to set up centres that focus on young women, helping them learn how to deal with and solve their problems.

"I come across many women who want to burn themselves, which means they have already reached the very extreme of what they can tolerate," he said.

"Here, we give them counselling on how to deal with their problems. So tolerance and awareness are the biggest factor in improving their lives when they leave here, because very little else is going to change."

Mentor Ohio High School Suicides: Mentor School Sued by Parents of Suicide Victims

In 2008, Mentor high school student Sladjana Vidovic, 16, tied a rope around her neck and the other end to her bed post and jumped out of her bedroom window. Eric Mohat shot himself in the head in March 2007. He was also a student at Mentor High. Meredith Rezak, just 16 years old, died by a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head after joining Mentor's Gay-Straight Alliance, just 3 weeks after here friend Eric Mohat died. Jennifer Eyring, a child with a learning disability, overdosed on her mother's anti-depression pills and died in 2006. It is believed each of these students were bullied.

Sladjana Vidovic

After Meredith Rezak, in 11th grade at Mentor committed suicide, a year later her 22-year-old brother, Justin, shot and killed himself. The remaining Rezak sibling, Matthew, died of a drug overdose in March 2010, at age 21.

The Eyring family and the Rezak family do not hold Mentor High responsible. The Vidovic and Mohat families have sued the school, but are asking for no monetary compensation.

Eric Mohat, 17, sat in a classroom and listened to a bully say out loud, "Why don't you go home and shoot yourself, no one will miss you."

Most of the harassment took place in math class and the teacher -- an athletic coach -- was accused of failing to protect the boy.

The father of a friend of Eric's, Dan Hughes, moved his son to another school, and said these students who died were "extremely bright," were "nerds" and were easy targets for bullies.

"What it boils down to is the football players, cheerleaders and kids with money have a different set of rules than everybody else," Hughes told ABCNews.com.

Eric Mohat

Throughout history, there have always been bullies at schools - probably at every school - everywhere. There are children who will suffer at the words and the fists of bullies, but suffering to the point of suicide...? Parents and school staff must do something about extreme bullying and parents must prepare their children to find the inner strength to get through it. We are the adults. What are we going to do about it - specifically when the school claims bullying is "not a problem." Read about Mentor's adoption of an "internationally known program - designed to prevent bullying" here. Read the entire story here.

Mark Turner Update August 2010: Mark Turner Suicide Attempt

As many of you know, I have written volumes about Mark Turner, his conviction for Racketeering, Money Laundering and Grand Theft in Pensacola and the long wait for a decision from the Florida Court of Appeals. I have an update and it breaks my heart for him, his family and those friends who love him, to bring this news of attempted suicide and prison. (See two new videos below)

Apparently Mark received a telephone call from his Appeals attorney (appointed by the court) sometime before Monday, August 23rd. The attorney broke the news that his Appeal was denied. She told him he would receive a court date three weeks to three months ahead, and on that date he should be ready to surrender himself to the court and begin a 12.5 year prison sentence.

Mark did not tell his wife Nancy or anyone in his family about the phone call. Then sometime before Wednesday, August 25th, his bail bondsman called him with the news that the Judge had revoked his bond and a warrant was out for his arrest.

On Wednesday Mark's wife Nancy, still knowing nothing about the Appeal denial,  received a voicemail from Mark. He instructed her to go to a certain place where she would find a note from him. The note was a suicide note. The note instructed her to call the police and give them a second note left by Mark, requesting that the police leave his wife and children alone - and it said they would find his body soon.

Police responded 30 minutes later. They read the notes and gave them back to Nancy. Police contacted Escambia County and Santa Rosa Country sheriff's departments. They told Mrs. Turner to go back to her home.

As she pulled into her driveway, U.S. Marshalls approached her home and demanded to know where to find Mark. She told them of her meeting with Police and showed them the two notes Mark left for her. The U.S. Marshalls took the notes and told her she would not get them back later.

The Marshall told Nancy and her oldest son that the warrant for Mark's arrest was for a "multi-million dollar white collar crime with a $300,000 bond. This from Nancy:

I told him he was mistaken, that the civil case was a 36 million dollar suit but that Mark had been out for 2 1/2 years on an appeal bond for an $84,000 charge.  I referred him to the Restitution Hearing's Last Document on Mark's website where a copy of the adding tape was provided, proving that the charges added up to $84,000.  He said he only knew what the warrant said.

By Thursday morning at 10 a.m. police called Mrs. Turner saying they had found Mark in the woods in his car. He had taken 80 Valiums and 40 Lortabs. In the event that he vomited-up the drugs, he hooked up a vacuum cleaner hose to the auto tail pipe and began to breathe in carbon monoxide from 2: a.m. to when the police found him. He had fallen asleep after praying. The police hit their siren and he awakened, tried to drive away but was losing consciousness, and hit a pine tree that was directly in front of the car. When Mrs. Turner got the call, Mark was on his way to the E.R. for treatment. By the time she got to the E.R. his stomach had been pumped and he was on oxygen.

Nancy had to explain to the children that Dad lost his Appeal, she told them about the suicide attempt and took them to the hospital with her. This is a portion of what Mark told Nancy:

I'm sorry I failed you and my family. I'm sorry my children could not just grieve once over my death but how have to grieve everyday wondering when will daddy come home, when will he win the Appeal, when will he get a pardon, is he okay, is he being raped in jail?

I'm not scared to go to prison and I don't care if I get killed in prison. I made my peace with my Lord and I am ready to go home. I am not suicidal or crazy. I will take the first opportunity to finish what I started so that you and my boys can leave this infested place and never look back.

Today, five days after finding Mark, Nancy believes he lived after extraordinary measures to end his life, because God still has work for him to do, including continuing to fight against Special Prosecutor Russ Edgar and...coming back home to his family.

You know by now that Mark's case was incredibly confusing. I'm asking for prayer for Nancy Turner and the three children - prayer for Nancy's ability to do what she needs to do for Mark to prepare for a "Post Conviction Appeal." Please pray for Mark, lying in a hospital, awaiting a sentencing date - a specific prayer that someone will address his well-documented refutation of the way his trial, his evidence, the Restitution Hearing and the Appeal were handled.

His wife Nancy Turner, needs an attorney out of the District to handle the Post Conviction Appeal, and an advocacy group willing to help with pro bono work. If you can help, or know someone who might be willing to help, Nancy and I can guide you to volumes of court documentations. Mark kept pristine records and it is all available online.

There were so many strange things that happened during the trial. Mark outlined them in a complaint he made to the Florida Bar. I have combined some information from that complaint and from other court documents to give you some of the more pertinent facts:

1. There is a Turner check for $205,000 that would have impacted the charges of Racketeering and Grand Theft had it been credited to Mark. The Special Prosecutor knew about the check but it was ignored in trial. The Comptroller for Pete Moore Chevrolet stated in Trial that she never saw the check from Mark but Pete Moore's attorney Michael Guttman stated in Trial that he personally handed it to Pete Moore

2. The trial's Verdict Sheet did not specify what Turner was guilty of...it was changed to the point that the instructions provided to the jury were confusing and suggested that if Mark was guilty of one charge then he was guilty of all three.

3. The Restitution Hearing was held after the trial, and the Judge himself stated on court transcripts that the charges did not add up to what Prosecutor Russ Edgar claimed and that the Sentence would have to be addressed in the Appeal. This information was provided after the trial, therefore excluding it for consideration of the appeals process.

4. The Restitution Hearing showed Mark owed between $83,000 and $84,000 - not in excess of $100,000 which is necessary for Grand Theft and Racketeering. (Mark contends that he has all the evidence needed showing that he doesn't owe a dime - nevertheless, under the circumstances, he was willing to settle at the figure the Judge, the Special Prosecutor and his own attorney arrived at, at the Restitution Hearing).

Click here for Mark Turner's rebuttal to the Florida Bar. You'll also find links to all the posts on Mark's case at that link.

I will have updates soon, including Mark's Appeals Attorney rebuttal letter to the Appeals Court.

Mark made these two videos sometime days before the suicide attempt on August 25th. As you listen, you'll see that it appears he planned additional videos, but something made him believe he could not go on. Keep in mind that when these videos were made Mrs. Turner did not know about the Appeal denial or the plans for suicide. Find links to all of Mark's court documents and the background of his case below the videos.


Mark Turner Part One (video) Mark Turner Part Two (video)

Read every court document here.

Read Mark Turner's blog here.




Latest: Mark Turner's Appeal Court Rebuttal - Appeal Denied

Mark Turner Needs Your Help: New Trial for Turner: Letter To Gov. Crist.

Mark Turner's Bar Complaint Against Prosecutor Russ Edgar

Mark Turner Leonark Patrick Gonzalez: Mark Turner New Gonzalez Charges

Mark Turner Pensacola Injustice: Mark Turner Patrick Gonzalez?

Mark Turner Framed? Pensacolan Russ Edgar, Pete Moore Motive for Framing Mark Turner?

Mark Turner, Pete Moore, Russ Edgar: Framing Mark Turner in Pensacola? Update

Sheriff Morgan, Patrick Gonzalez Contract Murders: Local Business Rivals Implicated? 

Byrd "Bud" Billings Business: Mark Turner Bud Billings Connection

Mark Turner Pete Moore Lawsuit: Bud Billings Pete Moore Connection

Byrd Billings, Melanie Billings Murdered: Billings Parents of 16 Children

Byrd "Bud" Billings Business: Mark Turner Bud Billings Connection

Mark Turner Pete Moore Lawsuit: Bud Billings Pete Moore Connection

Sheriff Morgan, Patrick Gonzalez Contract Murders: Local Business Rivals Implicated?

Patrick Poff Gonzalez Whack Bud Billings? Gonzalez Implicates MS-13

WaPo Skews Joe Stack's Manifesto?

Clifton at Another Black Conservative catches WaPo's Jonathan Capehart doing some heavy-handed editing to Joseph Andrew Stack's suicide/rant/manifesto. Surprise, surprise, an omission here, an omission there, and a mad man's words just might make him appear to be a Tea Party enthusiast. And a  an unsuspecting reader might think Stack's politics were in line with Janet Napolitano's "far right wing extremists," like maybe, returning warriors and retired vets.

If you missed the big story of Joseph Andrew Stack flying his small plan into a 7-story office building in Austin, Texas this week, killing himself and one other, wounding many, while attempting to take down the IRS offices there, you can read that story here.

Here's what Jonathan Capehart said:

There's no information yet on whether he was involved in any anti-government groups or whether he was a lone wolf. But after reading his 34-paragraph screed, I am struck by how his alienation is similar to that we're hearing from the extreme elements of the Tea Party movement.

When you sit a a big important news desk, at an elite newspaper like the Washington Post, and you can't make the latest sensational story what you want it to be, what do you do? Well, maybe you leave out the inconvenient parts. That's what JonathanCapehart appears to have done in his reporting on the suicide pilot's last words.

Capehart kind/sorta covers himself by saying "here are excepts I was able to snag before the FBI took Stack's site down," but of course, the complete manifesto is all over the Internet. You can read it here. The text in green text below are quotes from Stack that Capehart omitted.

Stack seemed to be suicidal mainly because of the IRS. Everything led back to taxes. He was distressed that religious organizations get tax breaks not available to the individual taxpayer, and he called the Catholic Church "vulgar" and "corrupt," and he referred to "the monsters of organized religion," making a "mockery of people who earn an honest living." "The inquisition is still alive and well today in this country."

Stack railed about GM receiving government assistance, and Capehart printed that, but Stack's diatribe against health care was curiously omitted...because this is no Tea Party position:

Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies.  Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”.  It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.

Tea Partiers like their health insurance. They want government to stay the heck away from it until the critical issues can be fixed - like tort reform and buying private insurance in the open marketplace, or across state lines. Tea Partiers want to retain their choices and promote competition among private insurers - never government-directed insurers, and they want the lawsuit scams to stop for the good of physicians, hospitals and patients.

Capehart omits Stack's remarks on patriotism -  the "incredible stupidity of the American public; ...you know, all that "crap about their "freedom...." When was the last time you heard Tea Partiers characterize freedom as "crap?"

Capehart ignores that as an 18-year-old college student, Stack was broke...was living on peanut butter and bread (or Ritz crackers when I could afford to splurge). But most college students are broke, and by the time a student reaches his 50's, chances are it will be a fond memory, not a battlecry. At the time he was living off peanut butter and bread, Stack met an elderly widow, who's husband's pension was raided by management and unions. The widow ate "cat food" to survive! Stack decided at the tender age of 18 he would never trust "big business."

Tea Party afficianados don't hate big business, because they know from big business comes small business, the lifeblood of America, and they would likely wear their "broke" stories as a badge of honor.

Capehart skips over Stack's comments about having a new wife and "a boatload of undocumented income," which led to a newly hired, but dishonest accountant. Over and over, Stack talks about the government stealing from the middle class - but that is not a Tea Party position. Tea Partiers want everyone to pay their fair share and not one penny more - no matter how much you have, or do not have. Everyone should be vested in our country, and no one should be penalized because of what they have, or do not have.

Then Capehart skips over Stack's stark disdain of G.W. Bush:

The recent presidential puppet GW Bush and his cronies in their eight years certainly reinforced for all of us that this criticism rings equally true for all of the government.

And somewhere in this, Stack says "violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer." Again, not a Tea Party position, but it would be a position of CNN and the Huffington Post.

At the end of Stack's rant, he closed with these two quotes, both of which Capehart omitted.

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

How can we ignore that the communist creed quoted by Stark sounds noble,  is intended to be a noble statement - but was left out of Capehart's analysis. Why? Because it is decidedly unAmerican, and decidedly unTeaParty-ish.

The capitalist "creed," however, accuses every American of gullibly serving up taxes to the tax masters, without knowing we are doing so, while others greedily feed out of our trough. Among those actually paying taxes, there is no gullibility, and that's why Tea Partiers want smaller government. But one thing you won't find among the general Tea Party population, is the mindset that violence is the only answer, including racking up a body count, his and those around him, or those who loved him, as the only way to make America set up and take notice. Both are a part of Stack's manifesto.

So what do you think? Could Capehart have actually not been able to "snag" enough of Stack's manifesto to point out the obvious, or did he just choose not to?  Visit Another Black Conservative and read his comments on Joseph Capehart's agenda.

Others talking about Jonathan Capehart:
Ace of Spades
Hot Air
Newsbusters

Gigi Jordan Kills Son in Failed Suicide Attempt: Gigi Jordan Kills Son Jude, in Peninsula Hotel

Gigi Jordan is described as a Manhattan socialite. She is believed to have killed her 8-year-old son, Jude Jordan Mirra, in the Peninsula Hotel at 55th Street where the body of the boy was found along with Jordan, still alive, with several suicide notes found in the room. See update below.

 

Peninsula Hotel

Off-topic, but notice the woman in the full-length fur. Where's PETA? Who knew you could wear fur these days on the streets of New York.

This report says that Jude was 9 years old, not 8, and says he was autistic. It also says the boy may have been strangled, which differs from the reports below.

Jordan, 49, is Belgian, said to be wealthy and the hostess of "big parties at the Rainbow Room,"  is reported to be in stable condition after ingesting prescription medicines:

The Post reported that the boy was found lying in bed wearing his pajamas and surrounded by thousands of prescription pills. A police source did say that prescription medication may have been involved.

THOUSANDS of pills. How does one get their hands on "thousands" of prescription pills?

From the NYDailyNews:

Gigi Jordan...was "babbling incoherently" when police found her on the floor of Room 1603 inside the Peninsula Hotel on Fifth Ave., shortly before noon, the sources said.

The boy had been dead for about a day when they found him. There were signs on his body of an overdose. The mother "lawyered-up" immediately, according to police, and is not talking.

An Aunt living in Belgium and said to be terrified for the safety of Jude, contacted authorities after receiving emails from Jordan inside the Peninsula Hotel saying she intended to kill herself and her son.

Gigi Jordan was distraught over the break-up of her marriage. She lives in the Trump Tower, checked into the Peninsula with her boy on Wednesday night, barricaded the hotel room door, and was not seen again. Jordan was taken to Bellevue Hospital.

Update 2-7-10:

Jude's father is Emil Tzekov. He live in California. He and Gigi were married for 5 years. The boy's last name is "Mirra."  Emil says Gigi is "not a killer."

Tzekov said his ex-wife quit her lucrative job as a pharmaceutical executive to raise the boy, who couldn't speak and battled other health issues.

Tzekov said he last saw the boy in early 2007, before Jordan cut off all contact and disappeared.

"It was distressing," he said. "She blocked my e-mails, her cell phone didn't work."
Friends and family say he tried unsuccessfully to find Jude - even hiring a private investigator. But he only discovered the boy and his mother were living in Manhattan after the botched murder-suicide.

"We had no nannies," he said. "She could afford them, but she wanted to do everything herself. She made sure all his food was perfect, that he was sleeping so many hours. Everything."

It took a terrible toll on Jordan, Tzekov said.

"She left her work, her partnerships, her social life," he added. "She used to go to business dinners and go shopping. But she stopped all that to take care of Jude."

Tzekov said the last time he saw Jude was soon after the boy underwent a complex transplant to try to strengthen his immune system at Chicago Children's Hospital.

"He was in pain," Tzekov said. "She maybe saw her son dying. Maybe not physically dying, but he was living with pain.

It wasn't just misbehavior," he said. "It was screaming, something that the medication tried to help. For some reason, she felt helpless.

Gigi Jordan has been charged with murder.

This report from the NYDailyNews says the mother left several long, rambling notes. In once, she "suggested her son was a rape victim" and "in constant pain.

She mentioned speaking with a Wyoming child porn investigator about the sexual abuse of kids.

Ex-FBI agent Flint Waters "told me many rich people are involved," Jordan wrote. "Many wealthy guys trade child porn like a hobby."

Waters did not return a call Friday night.

The same article says she mailed a $12 million check to Doctors Without Borders and $8 million to the Red Cross for Haiti relief. That is according to her notes. Neither charity had a records of these donations. The speculation is that the money was just before checking into the hotel on Wednesday night.

Celia E. Casals is Woman on Fire at Mall of the Americas

Celia E. Casals is the woman who set herself on fire at the Mall of the Americas in Miami-Dade, Florida on Thursday. See video below.

Celia E. Casals - Mall of the Americas Celia Casales

Ms. Casals is 42 years old and a resident of North Miami, Florida. According to her husband, she "had issues burning inside," and a history of being under psychiatric care. Casals doused herself with a fire accelerate, set herself ablaze and walked through the Miami-Dade mall in silence, according to witnesses. Her daughter reportedly works at the Mall of Americas. Witnesses said they saw her earlier with a dozen or two red and white roses. This report says she left the roses at the Savage Boutique, where she applied the accelerate. The video below confirms that her daughter works at this boutique. She and her husband also have a 4 year old daughter. Shoppers screamed as the flames shot higher.

"She was completely on fire,'' Morales said. "She wasn't screaming or saying a word. She wasn't running. She was just walking.'' Morales called 911. Moments later, an unidentified person tried to extinguish the fire by pushing the woman to the ground. When the woman didn't fall, Santiago Castro, who manages a travel agency in the mall, grabbed a fire extinguisher, pointed it at the woman and pressed the handle. It discharged, but it didn't douse theflames. "She looked like a human torch, on fire from head to toe,'' Castro said. Torres, the other man who tried to help, followed with a fire extinguisher and was eventually able to put out the fire. The woman then opened an exit door and walked out to the parking lot, witnesses said.

Casals continued to walk without saying a word, not screaming and in shock, according to witnesses.

Her hair and clothing had been burned off. Morales said the woman's skin was charred and bubbling.

"She wasn't making eye contact with anyone,'' he said. "It was like she was in her own world.''

Casals managed to walk to the parking lot with her clothes burned off. Fire Rescue Lt. Arnold Piedrahita said she was conscious and talking to them. One witness said it was "movie style stuntman stuff." As always, there are heroes willing to put their own lives at risk when someone decides to take their life. At least three persons in the mall trying to assist her were treated for minor injuries. Authorities believe she tried to kill herself by "self-Immolation, known as suicide by fire. Celia Casals has third degree burns over 75 percent of her body. She is in "very critical condition," and her injuries are life threatening. Celia E. Casals - Woman on Fire at Mall of the Americas