mother has begged a judge not to jail her as she was sentenced to three years behind bars for forcing her 20-year-old daughter to marry her eventual murderer.
Sakina Muhammad Jan, 48, cried and yelled in the Victorian County Court today, telling the judge through an interpreter she hadn’t done anything wrong and could not accept her sentence.
She is the first person in Australia to be sentenced on the charge of causing a person to enter into a forced marriage since it became an offence in 2013.Jan was found guilty of forcing her daughter Ruqia Haidari to marry Mohammad Ali Halimi in August 2019, after the 20-year-old’s first marriage ended in divorce. Ms Haidari told friends, teachers and driving instructors she did not want to marry the older man, wanting instead to focus on her studies.Ms Haidari and Halimi were married in Shepparton on August 21, 2019. The couple moved to Halimi’s home in Perth later that year.
He killed his young bride five months after their wedding and is serving a life prison term for murder.
Judge Fran Dalziel on Monday found while Jan clearly grieved her daughter’s death, she had shown no contrition for her offending.
“You abused your power as a mother – as the person (Ms Haidari) loved and respected,” the judge said.
“While you believed you were acting in her best interests, you were not in fact doing so.”
