‘Honour’ killer wins parole review
Enraged that she might be cheating on him, Adi Humaid chased his wife down and stabbed her to death on the afternoon of Oct. 14, 1999, then went for sweets and coffee with friends.
The Dubai engineer had travelled to Ottawa to kill his wife, Crown prosecutors would later charge, and he almost got away with it. But Ottawa police arrested him the same day at a rental car agency, just hours before his scheduled flight home to the United Arab Emirates.
Humaid admitted at the start of his six-week trial that he killed Aysar Abbas, 46, during a visit to Ottawa he said was to check on his eldest son, a student at the University of Ottawa. The killer presented himself as a loving Muslim husband who went into an altered state of mind when his wife hinted about an affair that would have dishonoured him.
A jury — five women, seven men — rejected his manslaughter defence and convicted him in 2002 of firstdegree murder, which carries an automatic sentence of life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 25 years.
Now 62, Humaid, a well-known Muslim leader in Canadian prisons, has gained a chance to get before the parole board early. In a successful “faint-hope” application, Humaid has won a jury review of an eligibility date that, as it now stands, will keep him in prison until at least Oct. 14, 2024.
Ontario Superior Court Justice Douglas Rutherford, assigned to screen the application, ruled this week to empanel a jury to hear the killer’s case for early eligibility. The judge thinks a reasonable-thinking jury may grant him some relief.
“I have concluded that, on the balance of probabilities, there is a substantial likelihood that a jury, acting reasonably, would grant some degree of relief to Humaid and reduce the period of time during which he remains ineligible to apply for parole,” the judge ruled.
The application included supporting letters from his children, who said they believe in second chances, an Anglican deacon he met while awaiting trial at the Innes Road jail in 1999 and a federal prison teacher who came to know Humaid at the now-shuttered Kingston Penitentiary. The teacher hired him as a math tutor for Muslim inmates.
Humaid leads Friday prayers, organizes religious events and “makes sure that younger inmates learn that Islam is a religion of peace,” the teacher wrote. “He has been a remarkable role model for them.”
A 2013 psychological assessment report shows that Humaid is a low risk to re-offend. He has completed a family violence course and a prison report says he has made “beneficial progress” in moderating his views and attitudes toward women’s roles in life and responses to infidelity, and tolerance for “deviations from his own value system.”
At the sentencing hearing in 2002, Crown attorneys and veteran detectives wiped away tears as victim-impact statements were read into court. Humaid, meanwhile, showed no emotion as he brushed his pants and twiddled his thumbs.