A Victorian woman accused of forcefully marrying off her daughter to a stranger in Western Australia who later murdered the young bride has pleaded not guilty to coercing her daughter into the marriage.
Sakina Muhammad Jan, 45, will appear at Melbourne’s County Court on January 19, almost a year to the day her daughter Ruqia Haidari was murdered by her husband in their Perth home.
Australian Federal Police arrest Sakina Muhammad Jan in October 2020.Credit:AFP
If she is convicted, Ms Jan would become the first person in Australia to be found guilty of the crime for which she stands accused.
Police claim Ms Jan coerced Ms Haidari to marry Uber driver and abattoir worker Mohammad Ali Halimi in exchange for a $15,000 dowry in Victoria in November 2019. Ms Haidari was murdered by Halimi at their Perth home two months later.
Ms Jan appeared in front of Shepparton Magistrates Court via video link dressed in a black jumper and grey scarf and was only required to speak to enter a plea.
“I did not do any crime and I do not accept any guiltiness,” she said via an interpreter.
Ms Jan was released on bail subject to conditions including not contacting any witnesses directly or indirectly, not leaving Victoria and the Commonwealth, and not travelling within 500 metres of an international port of entry to Australia. She was also instructed to surrender her passport.
It was revealed late on Thursday afternoon Ms Jan had told her daughter to stay with her husband in Perth, saying “don’t come back to us, we will only take back your dead body”.
The exchange occurred just weeks before Ms Haidari was murdered by Halimi at their Perth home during an argument about their relationship.
Maryiam Khan, a high school friend of Ms Haidari, told the court her friend was deeply unhappy about marrying her husband but feared her mother would get upset if she shared her feelings.
In her statement to police, she also claimed Halimi had made unwanted sexual advances on Ms Haidari on at least two occasions, including on their wedding night.
The court heard Ms Haidari was engaged to another man for about two years before her wedding to Halimi in 2019, but the engagement was broken off over a feud between the families.
Ms Khan said Halimi had been rejected as a potential suitor by another family in Shepparton for being too old, but because of Ms Haidari’s previous engagement “she couldn’t really get a good boy to marry, so she was quite limited in her choices”.
The court heard several people within Shepparton’s Afghan community approached Ms Jan to raise their concerns about the wedding, but their advice fell on deaf ears.
Witnesses told the court it was frowned upon for outsiders to interfere in family affairs, such as weddings, in Afghan culture, and explained Ms Haidari was reluctant to ask for help for that reason.
It is alleged Ms Haidari contacted the Australian Federal Police’s human trafficking team in August 2019 and told officers she was being threatened and coerced into the union.
During Halimi’s sentencing in WA’s Supreme Court in August, the court heard the pair settled in Halimi’s home in the northern Perth suburb of Balcatta, but their relationship quickly became strained after Ms Haidari repeatedly rebuffed Halimi’s attempts at intimacy.
On the morning of January 18, 2020, the pair were arguing about their relationship when Halimi grabbed a stainless-steel kitchen knife and slit Ms Haidari’s throat twice before handing himself over to police.
He was sentenced to a minimum of 19 years in prison for the murder.
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