By all accounts, Khatera Sadiqi was a typical 20-year-old woman on the day her brother pointed a gun at her and her fiance, pulled the trigger five times and killed them both.
Excited about her upcoming marriage to Feroz Mangal, the 23-year-old Afghan man to whom she'd recently become engaged, Sadiqi was in a good mood on the evening of Sept. 18, 2006. She, her beloved, her brother and some of their friends met for dinner at a downtown restaurant before heading to the Rainbow Cinemas at the St. Laurent Shopping Centre.
In the days and weeks before the gathering, Sadiqi told a friend she was pleased to be rebuilding a broken relationship with her brother, Hasibullah Sadiqi.
In his mind, Khatera had not followed the traditional path towards marriage normally required by young women of Afghan heritage, friends and family members testified at Hasibullah's first-degree murder trial.
Despite the fact she'd lived with her father for many years after her parents divorced, Khatera and her dad no longer spoke, which precluded her from seeking his permission to marry Mangal.
Met with mother
Khatera's mother lived in British Columbia, and for a time the young woman tried living on the west coast. Back in Ottawa was Mangal, a young man to whom Khatera had become close.
The couple decided to get married, something Mangal told his father, Sultan, when the younger Mangal was hospitalized for a surgical procedure in early 2006.
Mangal travelled to British Columbia where he met Khatera's mother, a meeting that went well.
But the young man had to return to Ottawa and it wasn't long before Khatera followed, staying briefly with an aunt in the city before another offer came her way. Mangal's family had grown very fond of the attractive, happy young woman and offered her a room in their home.
At Hasibullah's first-degree murder trial earlier this month, the man who would have been the young woman's father-in-law often became emotional when speaking about her. "She was happy and she was like a daughter in the house," Sultan Mangal said. "She was even calling (me) father."
At the same time Khatera was planning out her future, Hasibullah Sadiqi was more focused on his family's history. Their father, Ghulam Sadiqi, had been born and raised in Afghanistan and many of his cultural values travelled with him when he emigrated to Canada from Kabul in the 1980s.
Hasibullah, now 23, was just five months old when the young family arrived here; Khatera was born not longer after. At the trial, their mother, Nasima Fayaz, described her former husband as "very traditionalist."
Observers of the relationship between the brother and sister could see he was protective of her, watched over her and always seemed concerned for her welfare. They were very close, people could tell, and seemed to get along very well.
But there were times when the level of control Hasibullah appeared to exert over his sister became a concern.
Tim Tourangeau, a vice-principal at the high school the Sadiqi siblings attended, said he remembered how Hasibullah seemed to keep a close eye on his sister at school, often following behind her when she was walking through the halls.
He also remembered how Hasibullah told him any concerns about Khatera, such as her tendency to skip classes, should be brought to his attention. When asked how he remembered her, Tourangeau became emotional.
"Alive; pretty," said Tourangeau, his eyes filling with tears. "When she walked into a classroom or my office, her smile would light it up."
Strained family ties
In the months before her death, the relationship between the brother and sister was strained. Zabeeullah Assadi, a friend of both Khatera and Hasibullah, testified at the trial about a chat he had with Khatera over the Internet in the summer of 2006.
During the trial, Assadi said he was convinced Hasibullah was upset about his sister's choices and he warned Khatera her brother might try to harm her and Mangal. Although Assadi admitted Hasibullah never actually told him he planned to kill the couple, he thought such an outcome was likely.
"Listen, your brother's really pissed at you," Assadi wrote to Khatera. "By God, he is going to do something unpredictable. He wants to kill you. No jokes."
"Even if he ends up killing me, I will still not disrespect him," Khatera wrote back. "I would not look up to him."
"What does that mean?" asked assistant Crown attorney Mark Moors.
"It means, 'I will bow down my head and take it,' " Assadi said.
On the last night of her life, Khatera was hopeful she was repairing her relationship with her brother and was happy, her friends said, about the future. But there was to be no future for either her or the love of her life.
terri.saunders@sunmedia.ca
