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An Afghan mother has become the first person jailed under Australia's forced marriage law for coercing her daughter into a marriage that led to the 21-year-old’s murder.
Sakina Muhammad Jan, in her late 40s, was found guilty of forcing her 21-year-old daughter, Ruqia Haidari, to marry 26-year-old Mohammad Ali Halimi in 2019 in exchange for a small payment.
Six weeks after the wedding, Halimi murdered Haidari, eventually getting sentenced to life in prison for the crime.
On Monday, Jan was sentenced to three years in jail under the law, becoming the first person to be sent to prison under the law. Australia’s forced marriage law, introduced in 2013, carry a maximum penalty of seven years imprisonment.
The judge cited the "intolerable pressure" she placed on her daughter before announcing the verdict.
Jan, who pleaded not guilty, expressed her grief over her daughter's death but maintained her innocence throughout the trial. The prosecution argued that societal pressure led to Jan coercing her daughter into getting married.
Jan, an Afghan Hazara refugee, fled Taliban persecution and migrated to Victoria with her five children in 2013. Haidari, her youngest child, had been first forced into an unofficial religious marriage at 15, which ended in divorce when she was 20.
She had expressed a desire not to remarry until she was 27 or 28, wanting to pursue her education and career. But in her community’s eyes, she had lost her value due to the divorce, the court heard.
The court was told this is the reason why the mother coerced her daughter into a second marriage to restore her family’s reputation. The pair was wedded in a religious ceremony in November 2019 without official registration. In the wedding, Jan received a bride dowry of $14,000.
Although the mother may have believed she was acting in her daughter's best interests, the judge said that she had repeatedly ignored Haidari’s wishes and abused her power as a mother.
“She wanted to pursue study and get a job,” Judge Fran Dalziel said during sentencing.
Several people close to Halimi told the court that she said she did not want to get into an arranged marriage, she wanted to study and marry for love.
During the husband’s sentencing for Haidari’s murder in 2021, a court in Western Australia heard that he had been violent and abusive towards her, forcing her to do household chores.
The day before the murder, Halimi sent a video to her family, complaining that she would sleep in late and refused to cook or clean. She also rejected his attempts at sexual intimacy.
"Haidari would have known that not taking part in the marriage would raise questions about you and the rest of the family," the judge said.
"She was concerned not only about your anger, but your standing in the community."
Judge Dalziel said that Jan “abused” her position as the mother, as the person with her daughter “loved and respected”.
“While you believed you were acting in her best interests, you were not in fact doing so,” he said, adding that she could also face deportation back to Afghanistan, which would be a “very grave thing” for a Hazara woman.
Jan was sentenced to three years in jail but could be released after 12 months to serve the remainder of her sentence in the community. After the sentencing, she expressed her refusal to accept the judge's ruling before being taken away.
Attorney general Mark Dreyfus, in a statement on Monday, described forced marriage as “the most reported slavery-like offence” in Australia, with 90 cases reported to federal police in 2022-23 alone, according to AFP.
“Everyone in Australia should be free to choose if, who and when they marry.”
