Candian Jury Convicts Family Murders | In the News | Forum

KINGSTON, Ontario
(AP) — A jury on Sunday found three members of an Afghan family guilty
of killing three teenage sisters and another woman in what the judge
described as "cold-blooded, shameful murders" resulting from a "twisted
concept of honor," ending a case that shocked and riveted Canadians.

Prosecutors
said the defendants allegedly killed the three teenage sisters because
they dishonored the family by defying its disciplinarian rules on dress,
dating, socializing and using the Internet.

The jury took 15 hours to find Mohammad Shafia, 58; his wife Tooba Yahya,
42; and their son Hamed, 21, each guilty of four counts of first-degree
murder. First-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no
chance of parole for 25 years.

After
the verdict was read, the three defendants again declared their
innocence in the killings of sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar 17, and Geeti,
13, as well as Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, Shafia's childless first wife in a polygamous marriage.

Their bodies were found June 30, 2009, in a car submerged in a canal in Kingston, Ontario, where the family had stopped for the night on their way home to Montreal from Niagara Falls, Ontario.

The
prosecution alleged it was a case of premeditated murder, staged to
look like an accident after it was carried out. Prosecutors said the
defendants drowned their victims elsewhere on the site, placed their
bodies in the car and pushed it into the canal.

Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Maranger said the evidence clearly supported the conviction.

"It
is difficult to conceive of a more heinous, more despicable, more
honorless crime," Maranger said. "The apparent reason behind these
cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent
victims offended your completely twisted concept of honor … that has
absolutely no place in any civilized society."

In
a statement following the verdict, Canadian Justice Minister Rob
Nicholson called honor killings a practice that is "barbaric and
unacceptable in Canada."

Defense
lawyers said the deaths were accidental. They said the Nissan car
accidentally plunged into the canal after the eldest daughter, Zainab,
took it for a joy ride with her sisters and her father's first wife.
Hamed said he watched the accident, although he didn't call police from
the scene.

After the jury
returned the verdicts, Mohammad Shafia, speaking through a translator,
said, "We are not criminal, we are not murderer, we didn't commit the
murder and this is unjust."

His weeping wife, Tooba, also declared the verdict unjust, saying, "I am not a murderer, and I am a mother, a mother."

Their son, Hamed, speaking in English said, "I did not drown my sisters anywhere."

Hamed's
lawyer, Patrick McCann, said he was disappointed with the verdict, but
said his client will appeal and he believes the other two defendants
will as well.

But prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis welcomed the verdict.

"This
jury found that four strong, vivacious and freedom-loving women were
murdered by their own family in the most troubling of circumstances,"
Laarhuis said outside court.

"This
verdict sends a very clear message about our Canadian values and the
core principles in a free and democratic society that all Canadians
enjoy and even visitors to Canada enjoy," he said to cheers of approval
from onlookers.

The family had
left Afghanistan in 1992 and lived in Pakistan, Australia and Dubai
before settling in Canada in 2007. Shafia, a wealthy businessman,
married Yahya because his first wife could not have children.

Shafia's
first wife was living with him and his second wife. The polygamous
relationship, if revealed, could have resulted in their deportation.

The
prosecution painted a picture of a household controlled by a
domineering Shafia, with Hamed keeping his sisters in line and doling
out discipline when his father was away on frequent business trips to
Dubai.

The months leading up to
the deaths were not happy ones in the Shafia household, according to
evidence presented at trial. Zainab, the oldest daughter, was forbidden
to attend school for a year because she had a young Pakistani-Canadian
boyfriend, and she fled to a shelter, terrified of her father, the court
was told.

The prosecution said
her parents found condoms in Sahar's room as well as photos of her
wearing short skirts and hugging her Christian boyfriend, a relationship
she had kept secret. Geeti was becoming almost impossible to control:
skipping school, failing classes, being sent home for wearing revealing
clothes and stealing, while declaring to authority figures that she
wanted to be placed in foster care, according to the prosecution.

Shafia's
first wife wrote in a diary that her husband beat her and "made life a
torture," while his second wife called her a servant.

The
prosecution presented wire taps and mobile phone records from the
Shafia family in court to support their honor killing allegation. The
wiretaps, which capture Shafia spewing vitriol about his dead daughters,
calling them treacherous and whores and invoking the devil to defecate
on their graves, were a focal point of the trial.

"There
can be no betrayal, no treachery, no violation more than this," Shafia
said on one recording. "Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows …
nothing is more dear to me than my honor."

Defense lawyers argued that at no point in the intercepts do the accused say they drowned the victims.

Shafia's
lawyer, Peter Kemp, said after the verdicts that he believes the
comments his client made on the wiretaps may have weighed more heavily
on the jury's minds than the physical evidence in the case.

"He wasn't convicted for what he did," Kemp said. "He was convicted for what he said."