A cabby who ordered a pair of revenge murders in Pakistan — all because his young daughter had left her loveless arranged marriage there — has been sentenced to life in prison.
Mohammad Choudhry, 61, staggered as he rose to his feet and was led out of Brooklyn federal court to begin serving his sentence, the most severe he could get by law.
“You were an egomaniacal force who revealed yourself to be self-absorbed in your merciless pursuit of evil,” Judge William Kuntz told the cabby in throwing away the key.
Prosecutors say Choudhry plotted and executed the overseas contract slaughters of his daughter’s new father-in-law and sister-in-law by cellphone, even as he drove his yellow cab through Manhattan and Brooklyn.
The daughter, Amina Ajmal, 23, had enraged her father by abandoning her arranged marriage to a cousin in order to marry the man she loved, prosecutors say. Choudhry saw the slayings as an “honor killing” avenging the shame that her running off had brought on his family.
The sister- and father-in-law were slaughtered because they’d helped Ajmal and her new groom escape, prosecutors said. At least one of the gunmen was Choudhry’s own brother, Muhammad Akma, according to Pakistani police reports, which prosecutors have cited in court. The feds are not seeking to prosecute the brother, who has also not been charged in Pakistan, a source told The Post.
Ajmal, who remains in hiding and married to her true love, did not attend the sentencing. But she had surfaced to take the stand against her father in June. She recounted tearfully how, days before the arranged marriage, “He told me he would kill me if you do anything wrong now.”
The father’s plan had been that by forcing Ajmal to marry her cousin, the cousin would then be able to get US citizenship and move to America, prosecutors explained.
During the emotional sentencing, Assistant US Attorney Margaret Gandy read aloud a statement written by another of Choudhry’s daughters, Seemab Abbas.
“He played with us as if we were non-living toys,” Abbas said in the statement. “He played with the blood of my family.”
Choudhry had maintained that he knew nothing of the killings, but appeared to back off that, though only somewhat, in asking unsuccessfully for the judge’s mercy.
“All what has happened — I’m deeply sorry,” he said, speaking through a translator.