An Afghan Canadian family Mohammad Shafia and Tooba Mohammad Yahya –huasband and wife plus their eldest son Hamed Mohammad Shafia were found guilty of ‘Honour Killing’pf three siblings and a relative after a trial.
Based in Kingston,Ontario the jury found the husband,wife and son guilty of four counts of first-degree murder.
The family’s three daughters and a supposed relative who turned out to be Mohammad Shafia’s first wife in a polygamous marriage were the four victims of the honour killing.
The prosecution said their own parents and their brother were responsible, and had acted because the teenagers had betrayed their religion and dishonored the family.
The three denied the charge, and defence lawyers said they would appeal the verdict, which carries an automatic sentence of life in prison without chance of parole for 25 years.
The act has been described as heinous and despicable which is difficult to conceive by the Candian media.
Over a three-month trial, the court heard repeated evidence that the three teenaged sisters had clashed with their conservative father on many issues.
One had a boyfriend, and had briefly sought shelter in a woman’s refuge, while another was sent home from school for wearing clothes that were too revealing.
The three sisters — Zainab, Sahar and Geeti Shafia, aged 19, 17 and 13 — were found along with the body of their father’s first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, drowned in a canal lock in 2009.
The Shafia family, originally from Afghanistan, lived in Dubai, United Arab Emirates for over a decade, where Mohammad Shafia had made a fortune in Dubai real estate.
They immigrated into Canada and settled in the Saint-Léonard borough of Montreal.
In 1979 or 1980, Mohammad Shafia married Rona Mohammed, who was infertile and unable to have children. In 1989, he took Tooba Yahya to be his second wife in a polygamous marriage, and she gave birth to seven children, though Rona played a crucial role in their upbringing and raised the children as if they were her own. When the family immigrated to Canada, Rona was presented as an aunt.
According to a family member’s interview, Rona was trapped in an abusive, loveless marriage, trying in vain to convince her husband to grant her a divorce. Rona’s siblings claimed that she feared for her life during the days leading up to her death.
Yahya, the second wife, allegedly said to Rona “You are a slave, you are a servant.” Reportedly, the Shafias held all of Rona’s identity documents, including her passport, so Rona believed she could not flee to another country, where she had relatives.
They also stated that the family’s eldest daughter Zainab’s relationship with a Pakistani boy was a source of much anger for her father and claimed to have overheard his threats to kill her.
With parents Mohammad Shafia and Tooba Mohammad Yahya, and eldest son Hamed Shafia all in custody during the trial, the remaining Shafia children (two girls and a boy) are being cared for under social services.
On June 30, 2009, a black Nissan Sentra with a broken left taillight was spotted submerged at the Kingston Mills locks, with four female bodies found inside.
Mohammad Shafia was at the Kingston Police station to report that four of their family — three teenage daughters and a purported aunt — were missing. Police initially believed that it was a tragic, if bizarre, accident, and first categorized it as a “sudden death investigation”.
However, authorities soon learned that Hamed had reported an accident with the family Lexus SUV in an empty parking lot early that same morning in Montreal.
Despite their suspicions, the authorities did not have “reasonable and probable grounds” or sufficient evidence to ask a judge for a search warrant.
Kingston Police Det. Steve Koopman, the liaison with the Shafia family, managed to gain the Shafias’ consent so that they could view the Lexus. After assessing the damage on both vehicles, police theorized that the Lexus was used to ram the Nissan into the locks.
