MUSLIM MAN WHO WORE BURKA AS A DISGUISE WHEN HE KILLED HIS WIFE SENTENCED TO LIFE IN PRISON(CANADA)

A Muslim man who wore a traditional woman’s burka and female shoes before he strangled his estranged wife was sentenced Wednesday to life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 17 years, a judge ruled.



Justice John McMahon passed the sentence for second-degree murder against Abdul Malik Rustam, who admitted he donned the headdress -- which disguised his face -- and wedge shoes when he killed his wife, Shaher Bano Shahdady, after she asked for a divorce.

The murder occurred in her Scarborough apartment and Rustam left their almost two-year-old son abandoned for 15 hours before Shahdady’s body was discovered.



“The accused demonstrated an exceptionally callous disregard for that young child’s well being,” said McMahon. “It’s hard to fathom what that child went through. The only glimmer of hope is that he’s so young it will fade into the child’s memory.”



Rustam, now 30, pleaded guilty on Valentine’s Day to second-degree murder in the July 22, 2011, slaying.



Shahdady fought for her life, leaving scratch marks on Rustam’s face and neck and keeping his DNA underneath her fingernails, court heard. On the day of the murder, Rustam confessed to his brother he “finished her by the throat.”

She had lived apart from her older, jealous husband from an arranged marriage for almost two years--using a cellphone and the Internet and expanding her social network while raising their son.



When Rustam rejoined his wife and child in Canada in March 2011, tensions flared as he objected to her having a “cellphone and an online friendship with another man” in Dubai, Crown attorney Joseph Hanna said in reading an agreed statement of fact.



Within days, the acrimony rose to the point that Rustam was asked to leave the Bush Dr. home and move in with his brother in Richmond Hill, Hanna said.



In May 2011, the victim’s father returned to Canada and convinced Rustam to reunite with his wife in her parents’ home. But his wife refused to surrender her cellphone and the tensions flared again.



She then moved out from her parents’ home in early July while Rustam stayed. She broke the news to Rustam that their marriage was over.



The killing occurred only two weeks after the 21-year-old woman received social assistance and moved into an apartment on Eglinton Ave. E.



SOURCE

http://ift.tt/1ndwIsh