A Muslim migrant from Algeria living in the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec is said to have repeatedly threatened to kill his daughters if they refused to wear the Islamic veil.
The 47-year-old, who lived with his family in Montreal, was convicted of threats and violent acts toward his four daughters, with the incidents taking place between 2016 and 2018.
“They were forced to wear the veil, and he regularly threatened to kill them if he saw them ‘like Quebec women,'” Judge Josée Bélanger said, Canadian newspaper Le Journal de Montreal reports.
According to the newspaper, the crimes began in 2016, shortly after the man and his family moved to Canada from Algeria, with the girls being beaten when they refused to obey their father.
The father’s abuse of the girls came to the attention of the teacher of one of the girls, who reported the 47-year-old to police.
During the trial, the Algerian migrant claimed that he was the victim of a conspiracy. He will remain in custody until he is scheduled to be sentenced. The man’s wife has also separated from him, and the man is said to have lost custody of his daughters.
Cases of “honour” violence have been seen in several Western countries in recent years, such as Sweden, where a man is said to have beaten his daughter with a kebab spit and forced two of his children to wear the Islamic veil.
According to the two girls, their father, an asylum seeker from Iraq, labelled them “whores” if they refused to wear the veil. The Iraqi migrant was sentenced to two years in prison for his actions last year.
In Italy, meanwhile, a 14-year-old girl living in Bologna had her head shaved by her own mother because she refused to wear an Islamic headscarf when she left the house. The parents of the girl, both originally from Bangledesh, were brought up on charges of abuse.