Three members of Montreal family decided four other troublesome family members had to be killed because they would not bow to a strict cultural code of modesty and obedience, jurors at the Shafia murder trial were told on Thursday (jan 26). Crown lawyer Laurie Lacelle outlined the prosecution theory of a complex conspiracy as she completed her closing address to jurors who will decide the fate of Mohammad Shafia, 58, his second wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed, 21. The trio pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder.
Mohammad Shafia (inset), an Afghan immigrant who brought his 10-member family to Montreal in 2007, had no motive to kill four of them and he did not have time to murder them on the morning they were found dead, jurors at his murder trial were told Tuesday. “They all drowned accidentally,” lawyer Peter Kemp, who represents Shafia, said, in his two-hour closing address to jurors.
Ten days before four members of a Montreal family were found dead, someone typed “where to commit a murder” into a Google search, using a laptop computer accessible to everyone in the family’s Montreal home. Is it evidence of a diabolical plot or a clumsy mistake by a suicidal teenage boy seeking information on how to kill himself? The dozen jurors at the Shafia murder trial, underway at the Frontenac County courthouse in Kingston, have heard both these suggestions.
Jurors at the Shafia murder trial heard the case’s 58th and final witness Wednesday morning (January 18) and then were told by the judge that the fate of the three accused will be in their hands in a week. The last witness, the eighth called by the defence, was a social anthropologist who testified as an expert on Afghan culture and the Dari language. He was on the witness stand for roughly an hour.
The 21-year-old Montreal man accused, along with his mother and father, of murdering three of his sisters and his father’s first wife, will not testify at his murder trial, jurors learned Tuesday morning. Hamed Shafia (inset) will be the only one of the three accused not to take the stand in his defence. His mother, 
The Montreal woman accused – along with her husband and son – of killing three daughters and her husband’s first wife, told “all lies” when she was interrogated by police after her arrest, she testified at her murder trial. During Tooba Mohammad Yahya’s (inset) fourth day on the witness stand, she was grilled by a prosecutor about statements she made that she has since recanted.
Tooba Mohammad Yahya (inset) lasted just 10 minutes on the witness stand before she was overcome by emotion that choked her words. The Montreal woman, who is accused – along with her husband and oldest son – of murdering three of her daughters and her husband’s first wife, was the first witness Monday after a 25-day break in the sensational alleged honour killing case that has been underway in Kingston, Ontario since October.
