NEW YORK, Feb 18 Aasiya Hasan, who was allegedly killed by her husband last week in a small town near Buffalo (New York) may have been on the phone with her sister when she was killed, CNN reported on Wednesday.

Asma Firfirey of suburban Cape Town, South Africa, told the Afrikaans newspaper Die Burger that she was on the phone with her sister, Aasiya Zubair Hassan, last week when she heard her telling her husband to calm down. She said she heard Aasiya say the two could talk about their impending divorce the following day.

Then she heard something that sounded like her sister struggling to breathe, she said.

“I can only imagine how scared and emotional she must have been before she died,” Firfirey said in the interview, reported in English by South Africa`s News 24.

Police have charged the husband, Muzzammil Hassan, with second-degree, or intentional, murder, according to the Erie County District Attorney`s Office.

Her decapitated body was found at the offices of Bridges TV, the television network where Muzzammil Hassan was chief executive officer and Aasiya Hassan was general manager.

Muzzammil Hassan told Orchard Park police on Thursday his wife was dead, led officers to her body and was arrested, said Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita. He was scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday.

Orchard Park Police Chief Andrew Benz contradicted on Tuesday a CNN report that quoted him as saying Muzzammil had confessed to the crime.

A Buffalo attorney told CNN that he expected to represent the accused but declined further comment, saying details had not yet been worked out.

Muzzammil came to America from Pakistan 25 years ago and became a successful banker, but he and his wife were troubled by the negative perception of Muslims, Voice of America reported in 2004.

Speaking in December 2004, he said his wife, then pregnant, was worried about that perception and “felt there should be an American Muslim media where her kids could grow up feeling really strong about their identity as an American Muslim.”

“So she came up with the idea and turned to me and said, `Why don`t you do it?`” he said. “And I was like, I have no clue about television. I`m a banker. ... And her comment was, `You have an MBA. Why don`t you write a business plan?`”

Bridges TV began as a television network for Muslim-Americans, aimed at overcoming the negative stereotypes associated with the religion.

In the past few years, according to a former employee who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, Bridges TV transformed itself into more of a cross-cultural network seeking to bridge the gap between all cultures. Most of their employees were not Muslim, the former employee said, and Muzzammil Hassan himself was not devout.

Aasiya filed for divorce on February 6, police said, and Muzzammil was served with divorce papers at the station. That night, he showed up at the couple`s home, she notified authorities and he was served with a restraining order.

Police chief Benz told CNN on Tuesday that police had responded to several domestic violence calls at the couple`s address, but no one was arrested.

Firfirey, as well as a Pakistani woman identifying herself as another of Aasiya`s sisters, characterised her as living in fear.

Firfirey said the last time she saw her sister was in May 2008, when she visited South Africa. When she arrived, she was badly injured, and Firfirey`s family paid the equivalent of about $3,000 for her to be treated, she said.

Aasiya returned to America, she said, because she wanted to complete her MBA degree and “didn`t want to leave her children with that monster”. She said she called Muzzammil “the fat man with evil eyes.”

A woman in Pakistan using the name Salma Zubair posted on a blog that she is the sister of “this brutally murdered woman”.

“She lived her eight years of married life with fear in heart,” Salma Zubair wrote.

“He had already frightened her enough that she couldn`t muster up her guts and leave him, and when she finally did gather that much strength he killed her so brutally. She lived to protect her children from this man and his family and she died doing so.”