A Mother's Punishment : A Daughter's Love

"My mother does not deserve to go to prison. She's a kind and gentle person."
"I love her more for all that she's done since that time, for pulling us through this. She's been the one going through this for five years, but she's the one who's been strong."
Bahar Ebrahimi, Montreal

Marcos Townsend/PostmediaBahar Ebrahimi in 2010

"What happened in 2010 is a fact. The victim is my daughter, the accused is my wife, and I am the only witness."
"But I am 100 percent sure that was not my wife that night. Physically, her face, her voice, the language she was using, was not my wife, not the person I've known for 26 years."
Ebrahim Ebrahimi, father of Bahar Ebrahimi

When Bahar Ebrahimi gave her statement to police soon after the arrest of her mother, she informed them that she had heard her mother shout out: "Let me go so I can finish her", as her husband was desperately attempting to restrain his wife from further attacking their oldest daughter, then 19 years of age. And who had infuriated her parents when she had been out all night, returning home in the morning hours.

Johra Kaleki, 43, had instructed her husband to leave the disciplining of their daughter to her; he should remove himself from the room. In his absence the mother attacked her daughter with a meat cleaver. Now, five years later, the daughter's dreadful wounds healed, she describes her mother as "the family's rock", telling a Quebec justice that should her mother be sentenced to prison the family would be torn apart.

Johra Kaleki had been found guilty of attempted murder when she attacked her daughter in 2010. Quebec Court Judge Yves Paradis had rejected the argument put forward by the defence that their client could not be held criminally responsible since she suffered from a "temporary psychotic disorder". And though it seems, under the circumstances, that this is indeed a logical explanation for what had occurred, it is one that has been rejected.

The Crown prosecutor argued "Ten years of detention would meet the goals of sentencing", as opposed to the defence lawyer's plea that Judge Paradis consider a three-year suspended sentence, along with charity work, rather than a prison sentence. The mother had testified that she had no memory of what had occurred. Originally from Afghanistan, the couple and their three children live in Dorval.

Bahar emphasizes in her mother's defence that she has suffered no psychological or physical repercussions as a result of the attack. The scars on her head from the meat cleaver have healed, and her mangled hand, she says, has recovered its faculty. The prosecutor, on the other hand, pointed out that the convicted woman informed a detective that she had acted as she did in response to the shame her daughter had brought to the family, drinking and "walking the streets like a whore".

The mother had struck her daughter "several" times behind the head and neck, and on her hands as she attempted to protect her head. The mother chased the girl and choked her as she attempted to escape. The girl's father exerted the physical strength to finally pull his wife away from their daughter.

Dave Sidaway/Postmedia News/Files    Johra Kaleki, who has been found guilty of trying to kill her daughter, leaves court with her husband Ebrahim Ebrahimi in 2012.