A burqa-clad Afghan refugee mother who forced her 20-year-old daughter to marry a Muslim man who then slashed her throat with a kitchen knife has been jailed, and faces deportation when her sentence is complete.
Sakina Muhammad Jan, who is 47 or 48 and was herself forcibly married at 13, was sentenced to three years in Melbourne’s County Court on Monday, but refused to sign a recognisance release order allowing her to serve two years in the community, saying: “I’ve done nothing wrong, I cannot accept … I cannot be locked in.”
But Judge Fran Daziel ultimately approved the order after Jan, who does not speak English, told the court via a translator “I’ve never done anything wrong and I will never do anything wrong,” News.com.au reported.
In 2019 Jan forced her daughter Ruqia Haidari, then 20, to marry Uber driver and abattoir worker Mohammad Ali Halimi, 25, who murdered her just two months later, after she moved from Shepparton, Victoria, to his unit in Perth.
Halimi, who was also a refugee from the Afghan Hazara ethnic group, was given a life sentence with a minimum term of 19 years in the Supreme Court of Western Australia in 2021.
A judge said in his sentencing remarks that Ms Haidara had rejected her husband’s attempts at sexual intimacy, their marriage was not consummated, and that Halimi had complained to her family she slept in too late and did not cook or clean.
On the day of the murder Halimi spoke to Ms Haidara’s brother on the phone and complained that she was “not giving him any love”, and nine minutes after hanging up called him back and said: “If you’re a man, come and get the dead body of your sister”.
The judge also noted that Halimi had admitted in a police interview that he knew Ms Haidari had been pressured into marriage, and had told him she had been “pushed” by her parents and did not love him.
Ms Haidari was first forcibly married at age 15, but that marriage ended in divorce and as she was seen as “bewa” – a woman of no value – her mother arranged for her to be remarried in exchange for a $15,000 dowry.
Halimi flew to Shepparton to meet her in June 2019, and they spent about half an hour alone before her family had to decide on the engagement. She next saw him in November that year at their “nikah”, an Islamic religious ceremony confirming their marriage.
Last week the court heard that Jan has never accepted criminal responsibility, but Judge Daziel said on Monday she accepted that Jan believed she was doing the right thing.
“You abused your position as her [Ms Haidari’s] mother, as the person with whom she loved and respected,” Judge Dalziel said.
“While you believed you were acting in her best interests, you were not in fact doing so.”
“It must be made clear to everyone in our country that forced marriage is against the law. You abused your power as her mother to override her desire to not marry Mr Halimi.”
The court heard that Jan faces deportation back to Afghanistan due to the length the of sentence, and Judge Daziel said that would be a “very grave thing”.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said that forced marriage had become the most reported “slavery-like” offence since it was criminalised in 2013, and that there were 90 allegations made in the 2022-23 financial year.
