‘Excuse me. I've killed my wife': The ongoing menace of forced marriage in Australia

Sydney Morning Herald

3 days ago

It's hard at first to make sense of the video. Filmed on a phone, it opens on a car clock: 12.56pm. In Arabic, the man filming says this video is evidence, though ultimately he doesn't need evidence because 'it's my life and I have my authority, whatever I do'. By now, he says, his wife should be awake and preparing food. Still filming, he gets out of the car and goes inside his Perth unit. He captures some dirty pots on the stove. 'No food, either,' he complains. Then he films his wife, lying on the bed, asleep.
The man taking this video, on January 17, 2020, is Mohammad Ali Halimi, then 25. Halimi, an Afghani refugee, is working as an Uber driver and Halal-method chicken slaughterer. His sleeping wife is another Afghani refugee, Ruqia Haidari, 21, who had lived for six years in the Victorian regional hub of Shepparton, two hours north of Melbourne. Eight months before this video was taken, Haidari was excited about finishing year 12 and had plans to go to university. She dreamt of being a flight attendant. She told a friend that she didn't want to get married until she was 27 or 28 and only then to someone she 'really loved'. But her mother had other plans.
'Excuse me,' he said, after waiting patiently for the front desk officer. 'I've killed my wife.'
Her mother, Sakina Muhammad Jan, pressured Haidari to marry Halimi against her will. When the couple flew to Perth to begin their married lives on November 20, 2019, Haidari found herself isolated and living with a virtual stranger with whom she did not want to be intimate. Halimi, meanwhile, was devastated that his wife was not behaving as he expected, and so he made the 'evidence' video as a complaint to Haidari's family.
The next day, during a fight, Halimi took a 35-centimetre knife to her throat and sliced it twice, killing her in the kitchen. Her brother, Taqi Haidari, told police that Halimi then called him and said: 'If you are a man, come and get the dead body of your sister.' With blood on his hands and clothes, Halimi then walked into a police station. 'Excuse me,' he said, after waiting patiently for the front desk officer. 'I've killed my wife.' Halimi pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced in 2021 to life imprisonment with a minimum 19-year parole period.
Ruqia Haidari's tragic death put the Australian Federal Police in an interesting position. In August 2019, AFP officers had met with her in Shepparton after her school had notified them that she did not want to get married. They offered to talk to her mother but she refused, saying it would be unhelpful. But after Haidari's murder, the AFP – which had never had a successful prosecution of a forced-marriage case – raided Muhammad Jan's home in October 2020 and later charged her with causing a person to enter a forced marriage (their investigation also discovered Muhammad Jan had received a $14,000 dowry from Halimi).
In an upcoming episode of the AFP's podcast Crime Interrupted, which was provided to Good Weekend, investigators explain that they thought a conviction against Muhammad Jan would set a precedent and deter others. It was also, says Detective Inspector Trevor Russell, 'an opportunity for Ruqia's voice to be heard'. But for many working on the forced-marriage problem, this was a low point. University of Wollongong criminologist Laura Vidal, who did her PhD on forced marriage, says the criminal justice system scapegoated one person within a complex dynamic. 'Nothing happened to the matchmaker, or the brothers, or the community or the 500 people who attended the wedding,' says Vidal.
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Muhammad Jan was, like her daughter, a forced-marriage victim. At age 12 or 13, she married a fellow Afghani she'd never met. She gave birth to her first child in her early teens. She came to Australia as a refugee with four of her children in 2013 after the Taliban killed her husband. She was uneducated, spoke no English and heavily relied on Shepparton's Hazara community which, says Vidal, would have expected her, as a mother, to uphold her family's reputation and find a match for her unmarried daughter.
Last year, in the Victorian County Court, Muhammad Jan was found guilty of causing a person to enter a forced marriage and sentenced to three years' jail with a one-year minimum. The court had heard how she developed serious depression after her daughter's murder and often dreamt of her calling out for help. At her sentencing, Muhammad Jan cried and told the judge, via an interpreter, that she'd done nothing wrong. Between 15 and 20 members of the Hazara community attended court that day, many also shouting and getting out of their seats. One collapsed and was taken away in an ambulance. 'It was the most dynamic scene I've ever seen in 11 years,' the AFP's detective senior constable Jacob Purcell told the podcast. The AFP had wanted Haidari's voice heard. But we'll never know what she would have said that day, watching her mother go to prison.
For Vidal, the prosecution was proof that the criminalisation approach to force marriage had failed. 'We've got one prosecution in 12 years that was only possible because the victim died. Are we really happy with that?' She has studied various approaches to forced marriage globally and concluded that the best model is not our model – which she calls 'the victim-perpetrator binary' – it's understanding the cultural drivers and gender power dynamics of forced marriage, and working with families to shift behaviours. Danish experts are now setting up a trial of this approach at Life Without Barriers.
Nesreen Bottriell, chief executive officer of the Australian Muslim Women's Centre for Human Rights, says the Muhammad Jan case has further damaged the relationship between Muslim communities and authorities. 'The community was shocked by this outcome. It's going to deter victim-survivors from seeking support for fear of their mother or family members being prosecuted.' Bottriell, whose organisation is one of the services victim-survivors can now use as an alternative to the AFP, says she feels authorities overly target the Muslim community on this issue and fail to consider other religions and communities. She says forced marriage is not religiously sanctioned by Islam. 'It's about power and control over women's decision-making.'
Ben Moses, the AFP's acting commander for human exploitation, declined to directly respond to Bottriell's criticism. He says the AFP's focus isn't purely on prosecution, but also prevention through community education and giving victims choice. 'As we know, not everyone wants to engage in the criminal justice process and we acknowledge that.'
Constable Taylah Potter, a Melbourne-based forced-marriage investigator, says in the past six months she's noticed a positive attitude shift, with more young people feeling empowered to discuss the issue with figures of authority. When I ask how she feels about her job, she says it's easy to get caught up in statistics and court outcomes, but then she'll help a 16-year-old at risk of forced marriage and 'it just completely changes the path of their life.'
The joy of freedom
Miriam serves me chocolate-covered pretzels, mini samosas and chai. She's wearing black pants, a smart, black short-sleeved top and lipstick. Her neat, one-bedroom rented unit is small, but it's hers. 'I never knew this concept, I don't know how to explain, just having basics, like having utensils, pots. And then when you move to a house, the bin schedule! Oh, my god, I hate that schedule. And cleaning. Proper cleaning, but with love.' Freedom for Miriam and Khadija is about choice. This rug, not that rug. Take this course, not that one. Go outside.
Freedom. That's the upside of escaping forced marriage. The downside? It's that gaping hole left where a family once was. Miriam misses her beloved brother. Stealthily, she tracks him on social media. 'I'm trying to see if he would give any indication he wants me back in his life. If that's the case, I would take him in my arms.'
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For Khadija, it's her sister, still overseas. Khadija is hopeful she'll not join the estimated 22 million people stuck in forced marriages globally. Recently, Khadija's been thinking about a moment before she left. Her father had brought two peaches. 'I think one of his love languages was definitely fruit,' she laughs. Khadija told him the peach was so sweet. The next day he brought a whole tray and said she could have as many as she liked. 'I just can't forget that. I'm like, 'How can you be such a good person and such a shitty person at the same time?' '
Meanwhile, Miriam is studying healthcare. She's got her flat, her licence, a job and a car. One day, she may even marry. 'I thought men were just heartless, cold, like, not giving any rights to women. Now that I'm outside I'm seeing my friends in their relationships, and it's different. It's caring, it's loving.' I ask about her big dreams for the future. She looks momentarily confused. 'This is what I was dreaming about. I'm there, right now.'