MONTREAL – Johra Kaleki, the Dorval woman charged with the attempted murder of her daughter, quickly went from defiant to repentant in the hours after her arrest.
A video of her police interrogation, conducted hours after her then 19-year-old daughter, Bahar Ebrahimi, was stabbed repeatedly in the basement of their home in Dorval, was shown to Quebec Court Judge Yves Paradis as part of a voir-dire, a request from the defence to have statements Kaleki made to police inadmissible.
Defence lawyer Isabel Schurman is arguing Kaleki was mentally distraught when she made the statements.
Schurman has also raised a Charter of Rights and Freedoms issue over whether Kaleki had proper access to a lawyer at one point after her arrest.
Her right to a lawyer was temporarily suspended because the blood-stained clothing she was wearing was considered as evidence.
The court has been told Kaleki was informed of her right to remain silent.
Before the interrogation, Kaleki told a doctor who was treating a wound she suffered that she did not regret what she did.
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Earlier this week, Paradis was also told that Kaleki said, to the officer who arrested her: “It’s my daughter, I can do what I want.”
She had also said at one point that the attack would make her daughter strong “and give her wisdom.”
But the person Montreal police Det-Sgt. Alexandre Bertrand found before him at the end of the interrogation was not the same.
At the end of the four-hour video, Kaleki is seen sobbing after having described the “explosion” of emotion that led to the attack.
Before it happened, Kaleki and her daughter had argued over how Ebrahimi had stayed out late some nights.
Kaleki said she felt pressure to keep bad impressions of their daughter from her husband, who she described during the interrogation as “a second God.”
“This will not happen to any of my children again,” Kaleki told Bertrand.
The 40-year-old woman sobbed often as she appeared to acknowledge she was in serious trouble and possibly facing a lengthy prison sentence.
At one point, Bertrand asked Kaleki, who is Muslim and originally from Afghanistan, whether she felt that what she did “was necessary.”
“No it was not. It was not,” Kaleki said through tears. “I went against my religion. I went against my God.
“I will be punished in this world and I will be punished on the day of judgment.”
During the interrogation, Kaleki also appeared to reflect on the aftermath of the attack.
She worried over whether the crime would be reported in the media, but became emotional and more concerned over the impression left on her youngest as she was placed under arrest and taken away in a police car.
“My little one, she saw me. She saw me. That hurts, you know? That kills me. I’m not that person. Do you think she will ever forgive me? Do you think she will forget it? No way.”
The case resumes on Thursday.
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