“Oh God, Oh God. . . Oh my Aqsa, you should have listened... .Everyone tried to make you understand. Everyone begged you, but you did not listen. . .”

So said the mother of Aqsa Parvez after Aqsa was murdered by her father and brother.

"You should have listened".

No, it's not Aqsa who needed to listen; it's her family that needed to understand women have rights including the right to live.

http://bit.ly/bzckFf

Father and son plead guilty to murdering Aqsa Parvez

Bob Mitchell      
Staff Reporter     

 

In a stunning development, Aqsa Parvez's father and her youngest brother admitted on Tuesday they strangled her in her bedroom.

Muhammad Parvez, 60, and son Waqas, 29, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the 16-year-old Mississauga high school student's death on the morning of Dec. 10, 2007.

But whose bare hands were around the Grade 11 student's neck remains unknown.

In pleading guilty, neither the father nor the son took sole blame for the murder, admitting only that they both were responsible for causing the neck compressions that led to her death.

Aqsa's blood was on Muhammad's hands when he was arrested after he called 911 and confessed to using his hands to murder his youngest daughter, according to the agreed statement filed as an exhibit in a Brampton courtroom.

DNA results also showed Waqas's DNA was under Aqsa's right hand finger nails, court was told.

At the time, Aqsa's death sent shock waves through the GTA prompting heated debate on the hijab, the challenges of integration for newcomers, and whether or not her death was the GTA's first crime of honour or a horrible case of domestic violence.

The young girl ran away twice from home, seeking to have more freedom than she could enjoy living under her father's rigid rules in a traditional Islamic family, court was told.
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In the days before her death, she told friends her father swore on the Qur'an that he would kill her if she ever ran away again, Caponecchia said.
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In a chilling police interview on the day of Aqsa's murder, her distraught mother, crying and talking out loud to herself, was recorded as saying she thought her husband was only going to "break legs and arms," but instead "killed her."

"Oh God, Oh God. . . Oh my Aqsa, you should have listened," Anwar Jan said out loud in a police interview room. "Everyone tried to make you understand. Everyone begged you, but you did not listen. . ."
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When she asked him why he killed her, he told her: "This is my insult. My community will say you have not been able to control your daughter. This is my insult. She is making me naked."

She said her husband never said he would kill her.

She told the officer that in her Pakistani culture, if a daughter doesn't listen to her parents, she is punished. "Either they kill the girl or turn her out of the house," she said.

If Aqsa had been living in Pakistan, her husband would have "killed her there too. . ."
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