Man who killed his unborn gets 15 years
MONTREAL • Sofiane Ghazi, who killed his unborn child three years ago when he stabbed his wife in the belly, will have to serve 15 years behind bars before he is eligible for parole on his life sentence.
Superior Court Justice Jean-François Buffoni delivered the sentence Wednesday morning at the Montreal courthouse. Ghazi, 40, was wearing a mask due to COVID-19 regulations, making it difficult to see if he registered any reaction.
Buffoni also sentenced Ghazi to an 11-year prison term for the aggravated assault on his wife.
On July 24, 2017, Ghazi used a meat fork to stab his wife 19 times in the abdomen and on one of her thighs during an argument in their apartment. She was 36 weeks pregnant at the time. The woman, whose name cannot be published due to a publication ban, was taken to a hospital. The baby was delivered by caesarean section and had an autonomous heartbeat for several minutes, but died of injuries sustained in the womb.
The couple had been married for 12 years at that point and lived with their two young children. Three days before he stabbed his wife, Ghazi had been granted a release in a case in which he was charged with assaulting her. He was ordered to undergo therapy for drug and alcohol abuse. He was also not allowed to communicate with his wife or to be at their home unless he had her consent. She agreed to take him back, but the night before she was stabbed she asked him to leave because he appeared to be high on drugs. Ghazi refused and she called 911. He left before the Montreal police arrived, but returned hours later and attacked his wife.
Ghazi then left the apartment with the only phone the family had, and drove away in the one vehicle available to the couple.
A neighbour came to the woman’s aid and called an ambulance.
While reading from his decision, Buffoni noted that a few days before the stabbing, Ghazi told his wife he didn’t believe the baby was his and said he didn’t want it to be born.
“The things he said three days before and the location of the 19 wounds — all on the wife’s belly, or close to it, and at least half injuring the fetus — showed that he wanted to prevent the birth of their third child,” Buffoni said. He called Ghazi’s crimes “horrible, fuelled by extreme conjugal violence and a brutality that has no name.”