DUBLIN — It was only by a chance encounter that 51-year-old Parwiz Assar met and married the woman who would later allegedly pay in gold to have him slaughtered on the doorstep of their Hayward home.
By that point in her life, Razma Mohammed-Ibrahim had experienced a life full of trauma, fear and shame, court records show. As a child, she witnessed the brutality of the Taliban. She hid from bombs and gunfire during the Afghanistan War, then fled to Tajikistan and eventually Canada.
Her lawyer says she was later forced into an arranged marriage with her paternal cousin. Three years later, she discovered her husband’s affair and got a divorce. Afterward, her family allegedly hid her. They treated her as a “bad omen” for having a failed marriage, according to court documents.
She met Assar, a cousin of a school classmate, in Canada. She was 22. A therapist’s report and court records tell it from there. There came Assar, a man nearly 20 years her senior, offering his hand in marriage. She wanted to say no. Her parents allegedly had other ideas.
“(My first husband) ruined my future and thought that no one would want to remarry me,” Mohammed-Ibrahim, now 37, recalled to a therapist, according to the report. “My father told me that I needed to make this second marriage work and that there would not be another opportunity for me.”
It has all led to criminal charges landing Mohammed-Ibrahim and her 23-year-old alleged lover, Samim Azizi, in jail facing charges that could put them in prison for life. Prosecutors allege the pair were both married to other people, sought solace from their troubled marriages through an affair and killed Assar in brutal fashion on Oct. 8, 2023.
Mohammed-Ibrahim and Azizi allegedly texted each other about the knife he would use and the mask he wore. Azizi allegedly traveled from his Washington home to the Bay Area, hid in some bushes outside the home and waited for his mistress’s husband to arrive. Authorities allege Mohammed-Ibrahim feigned discovering the body, called 911 and appeared frantic but curious when emergency responders arrived at the home surrounded by Tennyson Road, Industrial Parkway W and train tracks.
The murder-plot was allegedly paid in gold. According to court testimony, Azizi traded the gold Mohammed-Ibrahim paid him to a local jeweler for $8,500 in cash.
Azizi denied his involvement when police interrogated him, but later admitted to killing Assar for Mohammed-Ibrahim, according to court records. Azizi allegedly said he’d be willing to serve her prison sentence. What he said helped build the prosecution’s case also built on surveillance footage, text messages and statements from the jewelers who traded the gold for money.
The legality of his confession is now being called into serious doubt.
Alameda County Judge Elisa Della-Piana said she wouldn’t even consider the confession, which was marred by the use of a translator who served as a go-between for Azizi and a Hayward police homicide investigator.
Detective Nicholas Niedenthal testified that when police read Azizi his rights, he mentioned that he couldn’t afford a lawyer. Della-Piana said it wasn’t clear to her that Azizi was aware he could receive an attorney for free. She added that investigators knew Azizi feared for his family’s safety back in Afghanistan — where his father worked alongside American soldiers against the Taliban, as an airport policeman — and used this fear “to leverage what the officer wanted to hear.”
“I realize that the trial judge may make a different ruling,” Della-Piana said. “They have that right if this gets to that stage.”
Still, Della-Piana ordered both defendants to trial on murder charges based on the remaining evidence. Hayward police officers testified at the hearing that they quickly identified Azizi as a suspect, and easily established that he was in the Bay Area, hundreds of miles from his home, on the night of the homicide.
But while defense attorneys have failed thus far to get the murder case dismissed, they have painted a more complex picture of the story behind Assar’s killing. Deputy Public Defender Marlene Jobe, who represents Mohammed-Ibrahim, has filed court papers saying that her client suffered “sexual violence” in both of her marriages, and felt trapped by rampant abuse. Still, she was apparently seeking a divorce and searched online for family lawyers throughout the day of the homicide, hours before it took place.
The report describing Mohammed-Ibrahim’s life — filed in a failed dismissal motion by Jobe — says that Mohammed-Ibrahim and Azizi met on Instagram. He told police he had a wife he lived with in Washington. Like Mohammed-Ibrahim, Azizi fled war-torn Afghanistan and suffered under the Taliban’s rule, according to the motion.
After the two formed a relationship, Azizi traveled to the Bay Area and met with Mohammed-Ibrahim, who worked at an East Bay Macy’s at the time. He eventually “professed his love for her,” and they began an affair, the report says. But then he too betrayed her, according to the report.
“He visited her work unannounced, waited hours for her in the parking and followed her home. Razma disclosed that she was intimate with Samim,” the report says. “She adds that she was unaware of his betrayal when he filmed their sexual encounter to use as leverage if she tried to leave their relationship.”
During the 2024 preliminary hearing Mohammed-Ibrahim was visibly upset — as noted by the judge and others — and attempted to exclude Assar’s entire family from attending court. Finally, when prosecutors moved to admit video of the actual homicide in court, she requested to return to her jail cell.
“We did discuss at the very beginning of the case she does have PTSD and some other diagnosed issues,” Jobe explained to the judge. “She does feel she is having some attacks.”