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Crown prosecutors are seeking to send the head of Ottawa's taxi union to jail for up to two years, alleging that a campaign of threatening and intimidating behaviour directed toward his daughter after she turned her back on the family's Muslim beliefs was an honour crime.
Yusef Al Mezel's threat of an honour killing was designed to "control and dominate" his then-23-year-old daughter, Eman Al Mezel, by suggesting she had brought shame upon her family that would be met with violent consequences, assistant Crown attorney James Cavanagh argued during a sentencing hearing Thursday.
Al Mezel, who pleaded guilty to criminal harassment last September, was trying to deny his daughter "every basic freedom as to how she could live her life," Cavanagh said, the result of an "underlying notion of patriarchal dominance" based on a "perverted and archaic belief in family honour."
"When she wouldn't bend to his will ... he raised the spectre of violence in the name of honour to scare her into complying with his wishes," said Cavanagh, who urged Ontario Superior Court Justice Lynn Ratushny to sentence the 44-year-old president of the Canadian Autoworkers Local 1688 to 18 to 24 months behind bars.