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.
Although her father eventually allowed her to wear jeans and shirts to school, instead of her traditional Islamic attire, she was still not permitted to hang out with friends outside the home. Her father refused to let her speak with friends, especially boys, on the telephone and forbid her from getting a part-time job.
Muhammad also disapproved of, many of her friends and blamed them for his daughter’s poor marks and failing grades.
Aqsa lived in a bedroom in the basement of their home on Longhorn Trail in Mississauga. Her bedroom was the only one in the house without a door, Crown prosecutor Sandra Caponecchia told the court, reading from the agreed statement.
The only way for others, including her parents, to get to their room in the basement from inside the house was to walk through Aqsa’s doorless bedroom.
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.
Aqsa’s mother Anwar Jan and her two other sons, Muhammad Shan and Ahtisham, were in court for the dramatic day’s developments.
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. . .”
She earlier told police in her interview that she advised her husband to let their daughter go, not to kill her.
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. . .”
Aqsa was slain around 7:30 a.m.
Muhammad called 911 just before 8 a.m. and confessed to strangling his daughter. Waqas was initially charged with obstructing police but then was suddenly arrested six months later and charged with first-degree murder
His arrest came soon after police intercepted a conversation between him and a driver, who worked for the same tow truck company.
In the electronically-recorded conversation, Waqas admitted choking her until she died.
Tow truck driver Steve Warda told police earlier that Waqas asked if he could get him a gun because he was going to kill his sister but his father would take the blame.
Tuesday’s plea means they will be sentenced to automatic term of life in prison.
The father and son were scheduled to stand trial for first-degree murder next January.
Victim-impact statements are expected to be read into the record later on Tuesday.