Why only 22 years? “‘Master of deceit’ gets 22 years,” by Katrien Smit in News24 (thanks to WriterMom):
Johannesburg – Riaz Kadwa walked into his parents’ bedroom on the night of October 5, 2005, shot his father eight times and his mother twice.
Kadwa, 23, was found guilty on Thursday of murdering his parents and sentenced by Judge Fritz van Oosten in the Johannesburg High Court to 22 years in jail.
His sister Nabila, 19, was found guilty of defeating the ends of justice.
Nabila was sentenced to 12 months in jail, suspended for five years.
Kadwa’s version that his mother, Munirah, had shot his plastic surgeon father Anwar before turning the gun on herself and shooting herself in the face was rejected in full by the court.
Repulsed by the blood
Kadwa had testified earlier that he’d heard shots in the house and found his mother bending over his father in their bedroom.
Dr Kadwa had still been alive. His son said he wanted to phone for help, but that he had been repulsed by the blood on the telephone.
He took a dressing gown out of his mother’s cupboard because she was wearing only a flimsy nightgown and in terms of the Muslim faith he shouldn’t have seen her like that.
She’d grabbed the firearm out of his hand when he’d handed her the gown.
He wrestled with her for the firearm, but she managed to shoot herself in the face.
The defence maintained that Dr Kadwa’s extra-marital affair, the possible divorce of his parents, his father’s murder and his mother’s suicide were seen as such serious crimes in the Muslim faith that it could adequately explain Kadwa’s action that night, trying to make the scene look like a robbery had taken place, to hide the truth.
Meanwhile, despite all this, another non-Muslim judge takes it upon himself to explain Islam to a Muslim:
Van Oosten, however, described Kadwa as “a master of deceit”.
“He used every opportunity to deceive and manipulate without a twinge of remorse and with one goal in mind: to protect himself.
“He betrayed and vilified the principles of the Muslim faith by doing so.”
Really? Which ones?