The father and son who murdered their 16-year-old daughter and sibling Aqsa Parvez have been given sentences of life in prison with no possibility of parole for 18 years.

Muhammad and Waqas Parvez pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Tuesday, with sentencing taking place Wednesday in a Brampton, Ont. courtroom.

The two had been scheduled to go to trial in January on a charge of first-degree murder. Had they been convicted, they would have been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

Superior Court Justice Bruce Durno the circumstances of the case demanded a far higher sentence than usual for second-degree murder.

He described their motivation for pleading guilty of sparing the family further embarrassment as "abhorrent."

The killing occurred in 2007 at the family's home in Mississauga. Her brother lured Aqsa back home after planning the murder with their father.

Months before Aqsa was murdered in her own basement, a statement of facts presented to the court reveals the teenager was at odds with her father and brother over acceptable clothing, curfews and friends.

While Aqsa believed her father's previous death threats against her, such claims seemed implausible to the 16-year-old's peers who had limited exposure to the conviction with which Muhammad tried to control his eight children.

Muhammad embraced a role as the leader of a home he believed honoured traditional Islamic values.

Some of Muhammad's ideas about how his children should live are revealed in the 19-page statement submitted to the court. They show a 57-year-old man deeply offended by his youngest daughter's desire to wear western-style clothing and associate with friends outside of the Muslim community.

Aqsa was strangled to death around 7:30 a.m. on Monday, December 10, 2007, minutes after Waqas, then 26, collected her from a bus stop.

Aqsa had been staying at the home of a schoolmate for more than a week. It was the second time in a year she had left her parents' home after tensions became unbearable.

Immediately following the murder, Aqsa's mother, Anwar Jan, told police that her husband regarded Aqsa as an "insult."

"'He said this is my insult. My community will say you have not been able to control your daughter. This is my insult. She is making me naked,'" Jan said.

In response to an officer's inquiry about the killing, Jan further explained a belief in Muhammad's native Pakistan that a daughter's disobedience toward a father warranted death.

"He would have killed her there too, whatever she has done here…" Jan told police. "Over there murders take place because of girls. Men kill them."

Aqsa's death has stirred debate about the nature of honour killings and prompted some to suggest that her murder represented the first such death in Canada.

While guilty pleas by Muhammad and Waqas eliminate the need for a hearing originally scheduled for January 2011, the men's lawyers argue that Aqsa's killing was a domestic homicide with cultural overtones, but not an honour killing.

"I submitted to the court that while there were cultural overtones, it could not be labelled as anything more than a domestic homicide," defence lawyer Joseph Ciraco said in an email.

"I emphasized that there were many issues within the family dynamic that were very common to many of us and had nothing to do with culture or religion. Things such as Aqsa's truancy from school, failing almost all of her classes, missing or arriving late at hundreds of her classes in the academic year leading up to her death; the family meetings at school because of her grades; the fact that she was a run away on two separate occasions.

"As a result, the root of their family problems, in our opinion, stemmed from the issues surrounding the upbringing of a teen age daughter.

"Once again, there are many cultural overtones that over lap also but I believe it would be irresponsible to label it an "honour killing". Clearly, the Crown has a an opposite perspective on the issue."

With files from The Canadian Press