A Montreal woman, originally from Afghanistan, who convicted of attempting to murder her daughter in an honor crime, was sentenced to three years in prison by a Quebec court.

A court had previously found Johra Kaleki, 44, guilty of the crime, after rejecting the defense that the attack on her eldest child with a meat cleaver was the result of a brief, psychotic episode of which she had no recollection.

The light sentence may have been the result of the fact that Kaleki’s daughter, Bahar Ebrahimi, did not press criminal charges against her mother and reconciled with her. Prosecutors had requested a 10-year sentence and say they will review the case before deciding whether or not to appeal the length of the jail term.

The incident began after Ebrahimi, who was 19 years old at the time, had been out all night for the second night in a row, violating the 11 pm curfew her parents had set for her. Her parents expected her not to go to clubs, smoke, drink or have boyfriends – rules against which she was rebelling.

When she arrived in the early morning hours, Ebrahimi and her parents argued with her parents in the basement of the family’s house. At a certain point, Kaleki went upstairs, took the meat cleaver, hid it in her shirt and returned to the basement.

She then told her husband to go upstairs, and that she and her daughter would resolve the problem alone. The court then heard how Kaleki cuddled her daughter and then told her to lie down on her stomach and stretch out her arms so that she could give her a back massage.

“Then I stab her, stab her neck,” Kaleki later confessed to a police detective. “She said, ’No, Mom!’ I said, ’It’s for your own good. Let me finish'.”

Ebrahimi was saved by her father who heard her screams and rushed to the basement, grabbing the knife from his wife, who then tried to choke Ebrahimi.

“I said to my husband, ‘Let me finish her.’“

Ebrahimi then ran upstairs at the command of her father, locked herself in her bedroom and called 911. Kaleki chased after her, trying to break the door down.

Under questioning by the detective, Kaleki was asked if the blade was sharp.

“No, it wasn’t. I wish it was. I wanted to give her the peace that she needed,” she said.

She later added, “She live with that wound. She remembers me.” Kaleki also said that the experience “will make her strong and give her wisdom … it means she will give up her ways of living.”

In the trial, the judge used Kaleki’s own statements to prove that she was not psychotic at the time of the incident.

“Mrs. Kaleki was able to appreciate that she was attacking her daughter with a cleaver and that the victim could die as a consequence,” the judge said. “In her statement talking about the period that she could be away from her children as a consequence of this incident, Mrs. Kaleki said, ‘I committed a crime. Yes. For myself I did the right thing. But if you look from the eyes of the law, I did wrong. I admit'.”

Kaleki had been freed on bail and testified she had no recollection of the incident. Two psychiatrists, one for the defense and one for the prosecution, testified in the case. The former said it was possible that Kaleki did not understand what she had done and had no recollection of the attack, while the later said that she was “very angry” with her daughter at the time of the attack.

Ebrahimi has since married.

Crown Prosecutor Anne Gauvin talks to the media: