The three Shafias were convicted January 29 in a Kingston court of four counts of first-degree murder. Each was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. Jurors found them guilty of  conspiring together in a diabolical plot that culminated with the slaying of four family members.

Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, were found dead June 30, 2009, inside the family’s Nissan Sentra that was discovered submerged at the bottom of the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills, a lock station on the Rideau Canal in Kingston in eastern Ontario. Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, also was in the car. She was Shafia’s first wife, whom he married in his native Afghanistan before the polygamous family moved to Canada in 2007 and settled in Montreal.

All of the victims had drowned but examinations could not pinpoint where and how they drowned.

The three-month long trial revealed that Shafia was enraged because he felt his daughters had violated strict cultural rules about sexual modesty, they dressed in revealing clothes and they were disobedient. Mohammad wanted a divorce and supported the three girls in their pursuit of western lifestyles. She and Yahya clashed frequently and Mohammad wrote, in a diary entered as evidence, that she was abused, humiliated and isolated.

Tooba will be held in isolation at the overcrowded women’s prison in Kitchener because her status as a child killer will make her a target of death threats from other prisoners. Child murderers are despised by fellow prisoners and are accorded the lowest status in the jungle-like social order of prison life.

Grand Valley may have problems managing Tooba safely, prison sources tell me, because the facility already is badly overcrowded and because it was not designed to accommodate high-profile, maximum-security prisoners who require protection. Grand Valley opened in 1997 as a minimum-security facility. It has been renovated several times in the intervening years as corrections authorities realized they desperately needed more secure facilities for small numbers of violent and dangerous prisoners.

Judge Robert Maranger of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice condemned Tooba and her co-conspirators in a stinging rebuke delivered at the conclusion of the sensational three-month long trial.

“It is difficult to conceive of a more despicable, more heinous crime,” Maranger said, before he imposed the mandatory life sentences. “There is nothing more honourless than the deliberate murder of, in the case of Mohammad Shafia, three of his daughters and his wife, in the case of Tooba Yahya, three of her daughters and a stepmother to all her children, in the case of Hamed Shafia, three of sisters and a mother.

“The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your twisted notion of honor, a notion of honor that is founded upon the domination and control of women, a sick notion of honor that has absolutely no place in any civilized society.”

Tooba, Shafia and Hamed have all begun the process of appealing their convictions to the Ontario Court of Appeal.

The Shafias will need protection from other prisoners in 177-year-old Kingston Pen, primarily because they are convicted child killers. Child murderers are despised by other convicts and are considered the lowest of the low on the social pecking order in prisons. Many are targeted for attack, though most survive behind bars. The Shafias also could be targeted because of racial and ethnic hostility that simmers inside most of Canada’s penitentiaries. As Afghans, they will be considered outsiders and foreigners who are despised by some of the cliques inside the prison. The Shafias also could face threats because of the profile their case attracted. Other prisoners will view them as ‘celebrity convicts’ who attract unwelcome attention to the prison.

Shafia

Hamed, 21, and Shafia, 58, likely will be held in isolation, at least during the first years of their sentences. They will have limited contact with other prisoners. They also will undergo detailed assessments, as prison authorities seek to determine what risk they pose to other prisoners and to staff, whether they are suicidal and if they pose any escape risk.

The Shafias join some of Canada’s most notorious killers who are housed at Kingston Penitentiary, including former Canadian air force colonel and base commander Russell Williams, the sex killer who was shipped to the lakefront prison in October 2010, after his conviction for murdering two women in Ontario. Paul Bernardo, the sexual sadist who murdered two teenage girls and raped many other women, also is housed on a special isolation cellblock at Kingston Pen, because he needs protection from other inmates. Bernardo was assaulted soon after he arrived at Kingston Pen. Child killer Michael Briere calls Kingston Pen home, as does Rick Wills, a former Toronto police officer who murdered his mistress.

The Shafias were convicted of murdering four family members. Sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, were found dead June 30, 2009, inside the family’s Nissan Sentra that was discovered submerged at the bottom of the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills, a lock station on the Rideau Canal in Kingston, in eastern Ontario. Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, also was in the car. She was Shafia’s first wife, whom he married in his native Afghanistan before the polygamous family moved to Canada in 2007 and settled in Montreal. All four victims had drowned. The trial heard that the killers incapacitated the victims, either by drowning them elsewhere or rendering them unconscious before placing them inside the Nissan and then pushing it into the canal.

Prosecutors established that Shafia orchestrated the mass killing because he was enraged that his daughters had shamed him by secretly dating and dressing in revealing clothes. Shafia’s first wife Rona wanted a divorce and could have exposed the the family’s polygamy, threatening their immigration status in Canada.

All three Shafias have given notice that they intend to appeal. They were automatically sentenced to life in prison, with no chance of parole for 25 years. It’s not known whether Tooba has been transferred to federal custody, though she may already have been moved to Grand Valley Institution, the only federal facility for women in Ontario.

» Read all of my coverage of the case

Hamed appeared to collapse onto the front railing of the prisoner’s box as the verdicts were announced. His father, standing next to him, put his hand on his shoulder and then on top of his head. Yahya appeared to begin crying.

“You have each been convicted of the planned and deliberate murder of four members of your family,” Judge Robert Maranger, of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice said before he passed sentence. “It’s a verdict clearly supported by the evidence presented at this trial. It is difficult to conceive of a more despicable, more heinous crime.

“There is nothing more honourless than the deliberate murder of, in the case of Mohammad Shafia, three of his daughters and his wife, in the case of Tooba Yahya, three of her daughters and a stepmother to all her children, in the case of Hamed Shafia three of sisters and a mother.

“The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your twisted notion of honor, a notion of honor that is founded upon the domination and control of women, a sick notion of honor that has absolutely no place in any civilized society.”

Maranger imposed the mandatory sentences of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

All three accused protested innocence when given a chance to speak in the courtroom.

“We are not criminal,” Shafia said, in a loud and clear voice. He spoke in his native Dari and his words were interpreted. “We are not murderers. We didn’t commit the murder and this is unjust.”

Yahya also said the decision was unjust.

“I’m not a murderer and I’m a mother,” she said.

“Sir, I did not drown my sisters anywhere,” Hamed said in English.

One young female juror began to sob after the verdicts were announced.

Clockwise from top left, Zainab, Sahar, Rona, Geeti

Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, were found dead June 30, 2009, inside the family’s Nissan Sentra that was discovered submerged at the bottom of the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills, a lock station on the Rideau Canal in eastern Ontario. Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, also was in the car. She was Shafia’s first wife, whom he married in his native Afghanistan before the polygamous family moved to Canada in 2007 and settled in Montreal.

All of the victims had drowned but examinations could not pinpoint where and how they drowned.

The three-month long trial revealed that Shafia was enraged because he felt his daughters had violated strict cultural rules about sexual modesty, they dressed in revealing clothes and they were disobedient. Mohammad wanted a divorce and supported the three girls in their pursuit of western lifestyles. She and Yahya clashed frequently and Mohammad wrote, in a diary entered as evidence, that she was abused, humiliated and isolated.

Lawyer Peter Kemp, who represents Shafia, said he had not yet talked to his client about the possibility of an appeal.

“He was not convicted for what he did, he was convicted for what he said,” Kemp said in an interview outside the courtroom, in a reference to damning wiretap recordings played during the trial. On the recordings, Shafia was overheard cursing his dead daughters as “whores,” “prostitutes,” and “honourless girls.”

In one recording, Shafia said: “May the devil shit on their graves.”

Defence lawyer David Crowe, who represents Yahya, and defence lawyer Patrick McCann, who represents Hamed, both said they believe their clients will appeal.

Crown lawyer Gerard Laarhuis said police and prosecutors are pleased with the verdicts.

“We want to thank the jury for their very real contribution to the administration of justice,” he said, speaking to a crowd of reporters and spectators on the front lawn of the courthouse. “Our community should be very proud of the quality investigation done by the Kingston Police and police from various police organizations throughout Canada.”

He said this is a good day for Canadian justice, which protects the rights of all.

“It’s a very sad day because this jury found that four strong, vivacious and freedom loving women were murdered by their own family in the most troubling of circumstances.”

As Laarhuis spoke, a man who was a witness during the trial began to yell from the crowd.

“This is a lie!” shouted Moosa Hadi, a man who was hired by the defence team as a translator but who ended up conducting a secret investigation for Shafia. Hadi testified at the trial that he was certain the family was innocent and that the victims died in an accident.

Spectators began cheering the police and prosecutors and shouted: “Well done.”

Laarhuis continued.

“We all think of these four wonderful women now who died needless deaths,” he said. “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.”

Staff Sgt. Chris Scott, the Kingston Police officer who headed the investigation, thanked Laarhuis and co-prosecutor Laurie Lacelle for “an exceptional job.”

“They gave these victims a voice when they had none,” Scott said.

In a written statement, Scott said it has been a long and difficult case.

“All domestic and familial violence needs to be eradicated and this case is a tragedy beyond measure,” Scott wrote.

It is not surprising that the seven-woman, five-man jury decided the Shafias were murderers.

During the trial, jurors heard six separate accounts of murder plots or fears by the victims that they would be killed. Three times, from the mouths of three different witnesses, jurors were told that Mohammad Shafia spoke openly and angrily of wanting to kill Zainab because of her shameful behaviour. Two witnesses recounted Rona Mohammad’s fears that he would kill her.

Most damning were the recollections of two of Yahya’s relatives, her brother Fazil Javid and her paternal uncle, Latif Hyderi, who both said that Shafia spoke to them of wanting to kill his oldest daughter Zainab because she had shamed him by running away from home and marrying an unacceptable young Pakistani man, acts that made her, in her father’s eyes, a “whore” and a “prostitute.”

Javid, who lives in Sweden, said Shafia tried to recruit him, in a telephone call, to lure Zainab to Sweden, where she and her father and uncle and other family members would go on a picnic near a river or ocean.

“He told me that we will put her in water and drown her,” Javid testified.

Shafia said that he received a phone call from Javid but insisted he hung up because of longstanding enmity between the two men.

“I did not even speak to Fazil,” Shafia testified dismissively, during the trial.

Hyderi, another transplanted Afghan who lives in Montreal, said he had a telephone conversation with Shafia while Shafia was in Dubai. The call followed chaotic weeks in the Shafia household. Zainab ran away from home to a shelter for women, and then returned after her mother implored her to come back. She married a young lover her family had warned her was unacceptable. The union was annulled the day after the couple wed because of outrage that the young man’s family failed to attend a wedding celebration.

Zainab told her day-old spouse that she could not stay with him because the marriage had humiliated her family.

Shafia was in Dubai when the wedding took place and spoke to Hyderi afterwards by telephone.

“He said, ‘I’m not happy … and she didn’t do a good thing, if I was there I would have killed her,’ ” Hyderi testified in November.

In his testimony, Shafia acknowledged speaking to Hyderi but denied that he articulated his desire to see his daughter dead.

Diba Masoomi, a younger sister of Rona Mohammad, testified that her sister told her that she overheard a plot to kill Zainab and another family member. Masoomi said her sister told her of the alarming discovery in a phone call. Mohammad said she had been eavesdropping in the Shafia home when she heard the plot being discussed.

“Shafia was talking to Hamed and Tooba, (saying), ‘I will go to Afghanistan, I will prepare the passport, I will sell my property and then I will come and kill Zainab,’ ” Masoomi testified. She said Rona told her that Shafia was upset and angry.

“He told that to Tooba, ‘If the girl doesn’t return, I will kill her because she dishonoured me,’ ” Masoomi told jurors.

She said one of the other two people asked: “What about the other one?” and Shafia replied, according to her account, “I will kill the other one too.”

Mohammad told her sister that she believed she was the “other one.”

Masoomi remains grief stricken in her recollection that she reassured her sister that she was in Canada, not Afghanistan, and there was nothing to fear.

Fahima Vorgetts, a U.S.-based women’s rights activist and a former Afghan, said Mohammad had told her in, in several phone calls, that she could not divorce her husband because of his deaths threats.

“She said if she leaves, her husband will kill her,” Vorgetts testified. “She took it seriously because her husband told her he will kill her if she leaves.

Jurors also heard two pointed accounts of death threats reported by Sahar and Geeti.

Sahar told her boyfriend’s aunt that she believed her parents would kill her if they found out about her relationship with Ricardo Angel Sanchez, a Honduran immigrant who lived in Montreal.

“She told me that her parents did not know about the relationship with Ricardo and the day that her parents knew about the relationship with Ricardo she would be a dead woman,” Erma Medina testified at the end of November. She said Sahar repeated the claim several times.

Medina said the defiant young woman planned to reveal the relationship to her parents it because she would love Ricardo “until death.”

Jurors heard that Montreal police officer Const. Anne-Marie Choquette, who was not available to testify at the trial, recorded a conversation with Geeti Shafia in April 2009.

“Geeti also told police that her father often threatened that he was going to kill them,” prosecutor Laurie Lacelle said, reading into the court record a statement from the officer.

Geeti and other Shafia children spoke to police in April 2009, roughly 10 weeks before their deaths. They told officers they feared violence from their father because their sister Zainab had run away from home. Geeti told the police that a week earlier her father had pulled her hair and hit her in the face. She said her brother Hamed punched her in the eye with his fist. The assaults came after the children returned home at 9 p.m., after their curfew, from a trip to a shopping mall.

Once the Shafias complete their prison sentences, they are likely to be deported to Afghanistan, according to a lawyer and former Canadian immigration officer.

Raj Sharma, who practices in a large Calgary, Alta., law firm that specializes in immigration cases, said the Canadian government temporarily suspends removals to some countries where there are natural disasters or war that put people at risk, but those provisions don’t apply to the Shafias.

“They would be removed to Afghanistan,” Sharma said, in a telephone interview from Calgary. “The temporary suspension of removals doesn’t help them.”

He pointed to a section of the Immigration Act that provides that anyone who is convicted of a serious crime is not subject to the temporary suspensions.

“We deport people to Sudan and Somalia and other hellholes including Haiti and we would deport to Afghanistan as well,” said Sharma, who also is an advocate of tough punishment for honour crimes.

His uncle was murdered 21 years ago in a shocking triple slaying that appears to have been the biggest honour killing on record in Canada, until now.

“This honour killing thing is kind of sensitive for me,” Sharma said. “These sort of male oriented, patriarchal cultures are especially susceptible, no matter how much they try to deny it or diminish it.”

In 1991, Daljit Singh Dulay killed his sister, Kulwinder Dulay, 20, her husband Gurdawr Singh Dulay, 28, and Mukesh Kumar Sharma, 28, on a street in downtown Calgary, Alta. outside a video store where the couple worked. Daljit Dulay was angry that his sister had eloped and secretly wed, without the permission of her strict Sikh family. He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder.

Sharma turned and ran after Dulay opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle but Sharma was shot in the back.  In 2007, Dulay was denied an opportunity to seek early parole from prison, although psychiatric reports concluded that he had renounced the Indian culture of honour killings.

Raj Sharma said he was in Grade 8 at the time of the killings.

“I was in court watching this murder trial for two or three weeks and probably that’s why I became a lawyer,” he said. Dulay acknowledged that because he was the son, “it fell to [him] to cleanse the family honour,” Sharma said.

With the conviction of the Shafias, the tally of confirmed victims of honour crimes in Canada since 2005 is now 11. Among this total, seven of the victims are young women.

• In 2006 in Ottawa, Ont., Khatera Sadiqi, 20, and her fiance, Feroz Mangal, were shot to death by Sadiqi’s brother, who believed she had shamed the Pakistani family by getting engaged without her father’s consent. Hasibullah Sadiqi, 23, was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder.

• In June 2007 in Scarborough, Ont., Anitha Selvanayagam, 16, and her boyfriend were walking together when they were run over and seriously injured by a van driven by her father. Prosecutors called it an “attempted honour killing” by Sri Lankan immigrant Selvanayagam Selladurai who was angry that his daughter had dated a boy of a lower caste. He pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated assault. Selladurai also ran down his son in law in the attack.

• In December 2007 in Mississauga, Ont., Aqsa Parvez was strangled to death by her father, Muhammad Parvez, and brother Waqas Parvez, 26, in the family home. The men pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and were sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 years. Aqsa rebelled against strict cultural and religious rules imposed by her Pakistan-born Muslim father.

• In January 2009, Amandeep Kaur Dhillon, 22, was stabbed to death by her father-in-law, 47-year-old Kamikar Singh Dhillon, who believed she would disgrace his family by divorcing his son. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Over the past two years, there have been at least four additional suspected honour crimes, including a June 2010 incident in Montreal in which a 38-year-old woman was charged with attempted murder after her 19-year-old daughter was stabbed. Montreal Police said they were treating it as a “crime of honour.”

(this appeared first at the Montreal Gazette)

Maranger said the jury could render different verdicts for each of the three accused although they were jointly charged with four counts of first-degree murder in a purported honour killing.

“Just because they are charged together and are being tried together does not mean you have to make the same decision for everybody,” Maranger said.

Mohammad Shafia, 58, his second wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed, 21, pleaded not guilty and have been on trial for more than three months. They have been in custody since they were arrested in Montreal in July 2009.

Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, were found dead June 30, 2009, inside the family’s Nissan Sentra that was discovered submerged at the bottom of the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills, a lock station on the Rideau Canal in eastern Ontario. Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, also was in the car. She was Shafia’s first wife, whom he married in his native Afghanistan before the polygamous family moved to Canada in 2007 and settled in Montreal.

All of the victims had drowned but examinations could not pinpoint where and how they drowned. Prosecutors allege that the deaths were staged to look like an accident and that the victims were drowned or incapacitated before the Nissan was pushed into the canal. The family maintains it was an accident and that the victims mistakenly drove into the canal.

Prosecutors allege that Shafia was enraged that his teenage daughters were dating boys without permission, dressing provocatively and defying him. The Crown argued that Yahya and Hamed joined the plot first conceived by Shafia. Jurors were told that Rona Mohammad supported the girls and was in conflict with Shafia’s second wife.

Maranger told the jurors that the Crown must have proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the killings were planned and deliberate, in order to find the accused guilty of first-degree murder. He explained that criminal law provides that a person can be found guilty of murder as a party to the crime because he or she aided or abetted – helped or encouraged – the principal offender.

Maranger reminded them that they must be unanimous in their verdicts but that it is not always possible for jurors to agree.

“Try your very, very best to decide this case,” Maranger said.

Jurors came to court prepared for what could be grueling days ahead. Several carried or pulled suitcases on wheels that were locked inside a small room near the courtroom before proceedings began.

Once jurors begin deliberating verdicts, they will be sequestered and will not be permitted to go home until the case concludes. If deliberations run over several days, the jurors will be taken nightly to a nearby hotel, under guard. They will be brought back to the courthouse each day to continue their deliberations.

Half an hour into the judge’s address, the scope of the job faced by the seven-woman, five-man jury was clear.

“Consider all of the evidence in reaching your decision,” Maranger told them.

Jurors heard 58 witnesses, including many who testified through interpretation, speaking in their native Dari, French, and Spanish.

More than 160 exhibits were filed, including thousands of pages of translated interviews and police wiretap recordings. The exhibits include more than 70 CDs and DVDs of documents and audio and video recordings.

Maranger’s address provides jurors with detailed guidance about how to apply the law to the evidence.

“Justice will not be done if you wrongly apply the law,” Maranger said.

Jurors retired to consider their verdicts at 4:30 p.m., but decided to end their work around 6 p.m. Friday. They left the courthouse in two minivans, planning have supper. They were escorted by court security officers and Kingston Police officers. They will be kept under guard at a hotel in Kingston when they are not at the courthouse deliberating.

“The evidence is that Shafia, Tooba and Hamed had decided that there was a diseased limb on their family tree… their decision was to remove the diseased limb in its entirety and trim the tree back to the good wood,” Lacelle told jurors.

Shafia sisters, Zainab (inset above), 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, were found dead inside the family’s Nissan Sentra that was discovered submerged June 30, 2009, at the bottom of the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills, a lockstation on the Rideau Canal in eastern Ontario. Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, also was in the car. She was Shafia’s first wife, whom he married in his native Afghanistan before the polygamous family moved to Canada in 2007 and settled in Montreal.

All of the victims had drowned but examinations could not pinpoint where and how they drowned. Prosecutors allege that the deaths were staged to look like an accident and that the victims were drowned or incapacitated before the Nissan was pushed into the canal by the family’s other vehicle, a Lexus SUV.

Lacelle told the jurors that Shafia was enraged that his two oldest daughters had boyfriends and were dressing in revealing clothes. His daughter Geeti was defiant, did not like school and was beginning to mimic the behaviour of her older sisters. And Shafia’s first wife was a source of ongoing friction with Yahya.

“Mohammad Shafia killed his daughters and Rona and he felt entitled to do so in order to protect his family honour,” Lacelle said, referring jurors to secret police wiretap recordings on which Shafia was heard cursing his dead daughters as “whores” who “betrayed” the family and “committed treachery.”

Lacelle said Yahya, who testified during the trial, offered “self serving lies” in court in a bid to conceal her “indispensable role” in the murder plot, Lacelle said.

The prosecutor said Yahya drove the death car to the isolated canal some time after 1:30 a.m. on June 30. She suggested that Shafia and Hamed took three other children, who were not to be murdered, to a nearby motel and dropped them off while Yahya stayed with the intended victims.

“She played the role of delivering Rona and her daughters to their deaths …she kept them at the scene, she kept them unsuspecting,” Lacelle said.

She said that a short time later, Shafia and Hamed returned, killed the four, placed them in the Nissan and pushed it into the canal at a place where they were sure it would be discovered the next morning.

Lacelle did not pinpoint how and where the victims were killed, but reminded jurors that prosecutors need only establish that the accused committed the murders and that the killings were planned and deliberate.

She said there was “ample and overwhelming” evidence that all of the accused knew of and participated in the scheme.

She pointed to evidence that Hamed, who spoke fluent English, used a laptop computer to search for a place to carry out the killings. Police found evidence of searches on the computer for “where to commit murder” and “can a prisoner have control over his real estate.”

“Hamed was one of the main architects of the plan to kill Rona and his sisters,” Lacelle said, in her six-hour closing address spread over two days.

Lacelle also told jurors there is evidence that should convince them that Yahya was tired of being a co-wife with Rona Mohammad. In a diary written by Mohammad and found by police after the deaths, Shafia’s first wife wrote of a miserable existence in which she was alienated from Shafia by Yahya, abused and belittled.

“Rona’s status as Shafia’s first wife had long been a problem and Tooba made it clear that she wanted her out of her family,” Lacelle said.

Jurors were reminded of evidence that Yahya stopped speaking to her daughter Sahar to punish her for misbehaviour, prompting the teenage girl to tell adults that her life at home was “unbearable” and that she wanted to die.

“[Yahya] had a capacity for cruelty to her own children,” Lacelle said.

On another police wiretap, recorded after the deaths, Yahya was heard saying: “I know (Zainab) was already done, but I wish two others weren’t.”

“She uses the word ‘done’ as in, finished, over,” Lacelle told jurors. “She knew that it was all over for Zainab and there was no other choice to be made … she had to be killed.”

Lacelle said the evidence establishes clearly that Zainab’s decision in April 2009 to run away from home to a shelter to be with a boyfriend that the family did not accept was the beginning of the family’s chaotic spiral that led to the murder plot.

Lacelle’s address did not begin until late afternoon Thursday after a bomb threat forced police to close the Kingston courthouse for three hours. Tactical officers, bomb specialists and uniformed police swarmed over the historic stone building at 9:45 a.m. Spectators who had queued to get into the Shafia trial, judges and lawyers were ordered to evacuate the building. The Shafias were taken away in a prisoner van.

When the building reopened at 1 p.m., everyone entering was required to pass through a metal dectector and bags were searched. Three tactical officers were stationed inside the courtroom when Lacelle resumed her address to jurors.

Kingston Police said only that there was a security issue.

Judge Robert Maranger of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice will address jurors Friday, explaining the law and the rules they must apply to the evidence. The 12-member jury is expected to begin deliberating late Friday afternoon. They will be sequestered once they begin.

(this appeared first at the Montreal Gazette)

Kemp spoke first as the three-month long honour killing trial moved into its final phase, with lawyers and the judge addressing jurors before they begin deliberating.

Shafia, 58, his second wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed, 21, have each pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder. They are accused of killing Shafia sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, who was Shafia’s first wife in the polygamous family.

The victims, who had drowned, were found dead inside a Nissan Sentra that was discovered submerged on June 30, 2009, at Kingston Mills, a lock station on the Rideau Canal in eastern Ontario.

Forensic experts could not determine where and how the victims drowned. Prosecutors allege the scene was staged to look like an accident and the victims were slain in an honour killing. It is an ancient practice in some South Asian and Middle Eastern cultures in which a woman or girl can be killed if she is perceived to have shamed the family, often through promiscuity or disobedience.

Kemp told jurors that friction in the Shafia household and allegations of mistreatment and restrictive family rules were blown out of proportion and that some of the children were prone to exaggeration and lying. The lawyer said Shafia was a liberal and loving father who moved his family to four new countries in a bid to ensure the children had access to good education and freedom from oppression. This is at odds, he suggested, with the prosecution’s portrait of a tyrannical and murderous parent.

“You would have to accept that the father of seven children, who had spent the last 20 years providing for them all around the world, who was in the process of building a large new home for them, for no apparent reason, became so black, so dark, so evil, that he would cold bloodedly plan the execution of three of them and carry out that plan,” Kemp said, his voice rising.

The lawyer also sketched a suggested timeline for the critical eight-hour period, beginning at midnight June 29. The Shafia family was returning to Montreal from a vacation in Niagara Falls, Ont., travelling in two vehicles, when they decided to stop in Kingston and stay overnight at a motel.

Kemp said cellphone records and highway camera recordings establish there was no time for the three accused to carry out a complex murder in which the victims were drowned at another location, then put into the Nissan before it was pushed into the canal.

“There was simply no time for a murder as opposed to an accident,” Kemp said.

Shafia testified that after they checked into the Kingston motel around 2 a.m., his daughter Zainab asked for and received the keys to the Nissan, ostensibly to retrieve clothes. In the morning, Shafia and Yahya realized that the car and the four family members were missing. They surmised, after the deaths, that Zainab took the car for a joyride and crashed it into the canal at the isolated and unlit location.

“You don’t know why the girls did not get out of the Nissan after it went into the water,” Kemp said. “If it’s the Crown theory that they all were drowned elsewhere, you don’t know where. You don’t know how, you don’t know when that happened.

“You don’t know who may have been involved in that and you don’t have any explanation for the fact that there was simply no time for a murder as opposed to an accident.”

Kemp reminded them that Shafia is presumed innocent.

“With all these unknowns, it’s only speculation that can provide answers and speculation, ladies and gentlemen, is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Kemp said. “Mohammad Shafia has not had the case proven against him and should be acquitted.”

Defence lawyer David Crowe, who represents Yahya, noted that police officers who interviewed the Shafia sisters several months before they died said the girls described Yahya as an “angel.”

“Her reason for living, which is to raise her family, to raise her children, to care for her children, to protect her children, why would that change now?” Crowe asked, rhetorically.

He said Yahya’s relationship with Shafia’s first wife was “complicated” but he said there was no corroborative evidence for suggestions that Yahya isolated or abused Mohammad.

Crowe said Yahya should be believed when she testified that she lied to a police interrogator, making the seemingly incriminating statement that the trio was at Kingston Mills the night of the deaths. Yahya testified during the trial that she fabricated a story, which she later recanted, to convince the interrogator to leave her alone and because she believed it would save her son Hamed from torture.

Crowe said the story Yahya told the officer was clearly a lie.

“Her description of what occurred at the scene simply makes no sense,” he told jurors.

“There are too many unanswered questions in this investigation,” Crowe said. “My client’s explanation, coupled with the corroborative evidence … and certainly the lack of motive on her part, the strong, positive relationship she had with all her daughters, should clearly raise a reasonable doubt as to whether she was involved in any scheme to get rid of those daughters.”

Defence lawyer Patrick McCann, who represents Hamed, will address jurors Wednesday, followed by prosecutor Laurie Lacelle.

(this appeared first at the Montreal Gazette)

This week, those 12 citizens – among them a truck mechanic, a music store worker, a utility supervisor – face the extraordinary task of considering whether the computer search, along with hundreds of other pieces of information, prove that the victims were murdered by three fellow family members, as prosecutors contend.

The jurors, seven women and five men, will review the evidence of 58 witnesses they heard during the three-month-long trial of Mohammad Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed, 21. They each pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder.

They are accused of a shocking crime, murdering Shafia sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, in what prosecutors allege was an honour killing, an ancient cultural practice in some South Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Perpetrators believe the only way to cleanse a family of the shame of promiscuity and disobedience of girls and women is to kill them.

The victims were found dead in a car discovered on June 30, 2009, submerged at the bottom of a shallow canal in Kingston, in eastern Ontario. They had drowned, but doctors and scientists were not able to establish where and how the victims drowned.

Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife. He married her in his native Afghanistan, before the family moved to Canada in 2007.

Jurors heard evidence that two of the Shafia girls were secretly dating, dressing in revealing clothes and defying their parents. Geeti had reportedly asked to be removed to a foster home and Rona Mohammad wanted a divorce, jurors were told, an act that would have exposed the family’s polygamy, which had been concealed when they immigrated to Canada.

The trial, underway since Oct. 20, enters a critical stage today (January 24), as lawyers begin to make closing submissions to the jurors. The submissions are expected to last two days, followed by the judge’s charge to the jury.

All three defence lawyers will speak. Peter Kemp, acting for Shafia, speaks first, followed by David Crowe for Yahya and Patrick McCann for Hamed. The speaking order is based on the order on which the names of the accused appear on the indictment.

The Crown has the coveted final speaking slot because the accused presented evidence. If none of the three accused had presented evidence – and they were not required to submit any – the Crown would have been required to address jurors first.

The submissions by the lawyers, speeches that outline their views of the case, afford them a chance to speak directly to jurors and to draw together the disparate threads of evidence into one cogent argument. It is a moment when some litigators shine, putting to use oratory and emotion in a bid to sway the jurors. Some lawyers believe it is the most important phase of a criminal case, particularly if the trial has been long and complex.

Shafia jurors listened to dozens of witnesses testify in French, Spanish and Dari, one of two official languages of Afghanistan. The jurors wore headsets throughout most of the trial, and heard simultaneous interpretation of the testimony of witnesses who did not speak English. It was clear that at times, jurors and spectators struggled to follow the interpretation while trying also to read the body language and demeanour of witnesses.

Jurors watched dozens of hours of videotaped statements of the accused, hours of secret wiretap recordings and audio recordings.

When the jurors retire to their private room to deliberate, they will take with them 162 exhibits, including thousands of pages of translations of interviews and wiretaps. A transcript of one police interview of Yahya is 215 pages.

There are hundreds of photographs – of the scene where the victims were found, snapshots the family took while on a vacation that preceded the deaths and pictures taken on cellphone cameras by the victims. There are thousands of pages of information in more than a dozen reports from medical, scientific and technical experts.

Jurors also must consider the key evidence of Shafia and Yahya, who testified at the trial. Hamed did not testify.

The jurors will be addressed by Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger, the Ottawa judge who presided over the trial, before they begin deliberations.

Maranger’s jury charge is likely to be long and complex. He will review the evidence and provide jurors a crash course in the nuances of applicable criminal law, including rules of evidence and the elements of murder that must be proved.

The judge will explain that the prosecution must have proved, in order for jurors to find the accused guilty of first-degree murder: that the accused committed an unlawful act; that the unlawful act caused the deaths; that the accused had the “intent” required for murder and, that the killings were “planned and deliberate.”

Deliberate means, according to the criminal law, “considered, not impulsive” and planned refers to a “calculated scheme or design” though the plan need not be complex.

Jurors also will be told that prosecutors must have proved their case “beyond a reasonable doubt,” a high standard, but not a standard that requires absolute certainty. If jurors believe only that the accused are “probably” or “likely” guilty, they must acquit them. The judge is likely to explain that reasonable doubt is not, according to the criminal law, “far fetched” or “frivolous.” It is doubt based on “reason” and “common sense.”

Most importantly, the jurors will be told in Maranger’s charge that they must be unanimous, in order to render a verdict. Jurors are likely to begin deliberating late Thursday at the earliest. There is no time limit for their deliberations.

If the accused are found guilty of first-degree murder, they will automatically be sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. For parole purposes, the sentence would be considered to have begun on the date of arrest, July 22, 2009. The trio has been in custody since that day.

(this appeared first at the Montreal Gazette)

“Jury, that’s all the evidence that’s going to be called in this trial,” Mr. Justice Robert Maranger said. “What we’re going to do now is, the counsel and I have some work to do before they can give their closing arguments to you and I give you my final jury charge.”

Maranger said the lawyers will make their closing submissions Monday and Tuesday – defence lawyers will speak first – and the judge will address them Wednesday.

“The case will be in your hands Wednesday, January 25,” Maranger said.

Mohammad Shafia, 58 (inset above), his second wife Tooba Mohammad Yayha, 42, and their son Hamed, 21, are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder. They have pleaded not guilty to killing three Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahara, 17, and Geeti, 13. The girls were found June 30, 2009, inside a car submerged at the bottom of a shallow canal in Kingston.

Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, also was in the car. She was Shafia’s first wife, whom he married in his native Afghanistan before the family moved to Canada in 2007 and settled in Montreal.

Prosecutors allege the killings deaths were a planned honour killing, staged to look like a car crash after Zainab allegedly took the car without permission.

Prosecutors claim that Shafia planned the murders to cleanse the shame he felt from the conduct of his daughters, who were wearing revealing clothes and secretly dating. Zainab also had a failed marriage to a young man who was not approved by the family. The trial also heard that Rona Mohammad wanted a divorce from Shafia and was supportive of the daughters who were dating.

Jurors heard secret police recordings made after the deaths in which Shafia curses his dead children, calling them “whores,” “prostitutes,” and “filthy rotten children” who were “treacherous” and who betrayed him. In one wiretap he says: “May the devil shit on their graves.”

Wednesday’s final witness, Nabi Misdaq, said he listened to some of the original Dari conversations in the wiretaps and read all of the translations. He said Afghan men are known to routinely use foul curses, particularly within their families.

“Expletives in Dari are very common,” he testified, in answer to questions by defence lawyer David Crowe, who represents Yahya.

“When a man is very angry or he’s faced with something which, you know, he thinks is nothing to do with him, it’s not his fault … he will use expletives,” he said.

Shafia testified that his curses on the wiretaps flowed from anger that his children had put the family in this terrible situation – having to cope with the deaths – and with the behaviour of his daughters. He insisted he did not see pictures of the two oldest girls in revealing clothes that particularly enraged him until after their deaths.

Misdaq was asked if there is a North American equivalent to Shafia’s devil-graves slur.

“I think the nearest will be to say, ‘To hell with them,’ or, ‘To hell with it,’ something like that” Misdaq testified.

He said that when an Afghan man utters a string of profanities, for example, calling a family member a whore, it doesn’t mean he literally believes she is selling sex.

Misdaq said men are very important in Afghan society. They are considered the primary breadwinners and the person who must be consulted on important family decisions.

During questioning by prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis, Misdaq acknowledged that an Afghan man uttering profane slurs might simply be using the foul language to better express his anger and disappointment.

Misdaq, who lives in the United States and was educated in England, had never been qualified before as an expert on Afghan culture and language at a criminal trial. He has provided culture and language training to soldiers in the Canadian and American military.

After his testimony was completed, the lawyers and judge began discussions related to the closing statements that will be made to jurors. Although the discussions are taking place in open court, they cannot be reported at this time.

(this appeared first at the Montreal Gazette)

Jurors weren’t told directly that the youngest of the trio will not testify, but they heard defence lawyer David Crowe, who represents Yahya, say that the final defence witness will have to be “qualified,” meaning it is an expert whose credentials must be assessed before the person is permitted to testify and give opinion evidence. The assessment process will take place in the courtroom Tuesday afternoon but because jurors will not be present, the discussions that take place cannot be reported.

“As I understand it, this is the last witness,” Mr. Justice Robert Maranger said, before sending jurors home for the day, after defence witness Mohammad Anwar Yaqubi, a half brother of Shafia who grew up with him in Kabul, Afghanistan, had completed his evidence.

On June 30, 2009, a Nissan Sentra was found at the bottom of a shallow canal in Kingston. Inside were the bodies of three Shafia children, sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13. Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, also was found dead inside the car. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife, whom he married in his native Afghanistan.

Three weeks later, the three family members were arrested and charged with first-degree murder. They have pleaded not guilty. The trial has been underway since October.

Yaqubi, a doctor who now lives in the Netherlands, testified that the foul curses Shafia is heard uttering on secret police wiretaps don’t suggest he killed his children. Yaqubi acknowledged he has had only sporadic telephone contact with his brother in the past 18 years.

“This is not the place for my brother to be in there, because my brother is not a murderer,” Yaqubi testified, in answer to a question by Crown prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis.

Yaqubi, who testified in Dari through an interpreter, said Canadians cannot understand that in his culture and language, Afghani men use the same curses to describe simple problems in life, like the theft of hubcaps, and the death of children. He said he believes his brother still uses an expression that he learned in childhood, to “cut someone in pieces with a cleaver” when enraged. Shafia is heard on one of the police wiretaps saying, of his dead daughters: “Even if they come back to life a hundred times, if I have a cleaver in my hand, I will cut [them] in pieces.”

But Yaqubi said he has never heard of honour killing.

“So you’re telling us that you’ve heard Afghan fathers talking about chopping up their own children with a cleaver but you’ve never heard about honour killing?” Laarhuis asked.

“Regarding killing for reputation or honour I never heard that … and this is a wrong label which has been put here, put on a traffic accident,” he replied in a long and rambling answer about the pain he has felt at seeing the media reports portraying his brother as a killer.

The judge cut Yaqubi off, at the request of Laarhuis, who said the witness was again failing to respond only to the questions. Laarhuis had to ask the judge to intercede several times during his cross examination.

On the wiretap recordings, played for jurors, Shafia calls his daughters “whores,” “filthy” and “rotten children” who betrayed the family and Islam and did “cruelty” to Shafia by secretly taking boyfriends and by wearing revealing clothes.

Prosecutors allege that the victims died in an honour killing orchestrated by Shafia to cleanse the shame he felt from the conduct of his daughters. The trial also heard that Mohammad wanted a divorce from Shafia and was supportive of the daughters who were dating.

“Honour is very important for him but we have to be careful; honour is a subjective issue,” Yaqubi testified.

He insisted that the interpretation and translation of the wiretap recordings and the police interviews of the three accused are flawed.

“I think they should be released and those people who are in charge of these interrogations or investigation, they didn’t do their job properly,” Yaqubi testified.

Yaqubi said his brother’s success in business spurred envy among people who would say “pessimistic” or negative things about the Shafia family.

“This was multi-millionaire family,” Yaqubi testified. “They had the best house in [a Kabul neighbourhood] and they had the best Mercedes Benz and the were the envy of the other families and the jealousy caused them to say these things.”

Yaqubi acknowledged that he did not know that Zainab had run away from home, that Sahar had attempted suicide, that Geeti had asked to be removed from the home by child protection authorities and that police had been to the Shafia home several times in the two years they lived in Montreal.

Laarhuis suggested Yaqubi did not really know what was going on in the Shafia home.

Yaqubi said the things he had been told seemed to be problems but “in reality, this is not a proper analysis, I think.”

(this appeared first at the Montreal Gazette)

Jurors had just risen from their seats to leave for a break and were still in the room to see the spectacle.

The day also marked the end of five and a half days of testimony by Tooba Mohammad Yahya, the 42-year-old mother accused of killing three daughters and her husband’s first wife. Yahya and husband Mohammad Shafia, 58, and their son Hamed 21, are charged with four counts of first-degree murder. They have pleaded not guilty.

Yahya completed four days of cross-examination by a Crown prosecutor with a defiant rebuke.

“This is a court date,” Yahya said, angrily. “It’s a date when people want to know the truth, not stories made up from your mind.” She tapped at her temple with her finger as she spoke.

The response came after Crown lawyer Gerard Laarhuis went over again the prosecution theory that the trio stuffed four family members into a compact car and pushed it into a shallow canal in Kingston at an isolated, unlit location early on the morning of June 30, 2009.

Later that morning, the submerged Nissan Sentra was found underwater. Inside were the bodies of three Shafia children, daughters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13. Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, also was found dead inside the car. She was Shafia’s first wife, whom he married in his native Afghanistan.

Prosecutors allege that the victims died in an honour killing, orchestrated by Shafia because he believed his daughters had shamed him by consorting with boys, dressing provocatively and disobeying him. His first wife had asked for a divorce, jurors have been told.

Laarhuis returned, in his final hours of questioning, to a theme he had raised many times previously, that Yahya had often given a police interrogator answers that seemed to exonerate her and her son while pointing the finger of blame at her husband.

“No, no, dear sir … this is your thought,” Yahya testified. “This was a respectful family, three people which was grieving, [police] put them under arrest and at that time when he put me six, seven hours under interrogation”

Yahya repeated her claim that the pressure of the interrogation and her fear forced her to fabricate stories based on what the interrogator had said. Prosecutors claim many of those statements that she now disavows were based on what truly happened.

“You brought a respectful family and put them in jail for two and a half years because you guys, the suspicions that you had, you guys took our freedom and took the freedom of our family and put my son in jail,” Yahya said.

“Can you try just to answer the questions, though,” Laarhuis said.

Yahya’s lawyer, David Crowe, called two siblings of Shafia as witnesses.

Half sister Farida Nayebkheil, an accountant who lives in Holland, testified that Shafia drove her to school every day when she was attending university in Kabul, Afghanistan. She portrayed him as a kind and liberal-minded person.

“I had a really good childhood with him,” the 48-year-old woman testified, through a Dari interpreter. “He was always proud of me and he loved me.”

She said she’s had telephone contact with him perhaps once or twice a year in the past 10 years.

Crown prosecutor Laurie Lacelle’s tone was terse as she began to question the woman. Lacelle handed her two photos that had been introduced as evidence earlier Monday by Crowe. They show Sahar, snapping photos of herself with a cellphone camera, while she is wearing a revealing bikini.

Yahya testified that these “naked” pictures enraged Shafia and they prompted him to utter some of the foul curses heard on secret police wiretaps. Yahya has testified previously that he did not see the pictures until after the deaths.

Nayebkheil thought the photos were of Zainab.

Lacelle asked the witness if she thought there was anything offensive about the photos.

“No,” Nayebkheil answered.

“Would it surprise you to know your brother described Sahar as a whore because of seeing these photos?” Lacelle asked.

“I don’t know about this matter.”

“Well, does it surprise you or not?” Lacelle insisted.

“Yes, I am surprised, yes,” Nayebkheil answered.

“You didn’t know about that belief of his?”

“No,” she said.

“You don’t know about many of his beliefs?” Lacelle asked.

“At the time when he was with us, indeed he didn’t have such beliefs,” Nayebkheil responded.

Shafia’s half brother Mohammad Anwar Yaqubi, who is a doctor living in the Netherlands, testified that Shafia encouraged women in their family to get good educations. Shafia never told his sisters what they should wear, testified Yaqubi, who said his family and Shafia and his family fled Afghanistan together in 1992.

Yaqubi said he has heard Shafia sometimes use an expression when angry, “I will just cut him to pieces with a cleaver,” but he had no fear that he would ever kill someone.

Shafia is heard on one of the police wiretaps, talking about his dead daughters and saying: “Even if they come back to life a hundred times, if I have a cleaver in my hand, I will cut [them] in pieces.”

Crown lawyers had not questioned Yaqubi when court adjourned for the day.

(this appeared first at the Montreal Gazette)