Accused Shafir family members in Kingston, Ontario Muliple Honor Killings: Hamed, Mohammad and Tooba

The murder trial in Kingston, Ontario of accused Montreal Afghan-Canadian businessman, Mohammad Shafia, 58, his second wife in a polygamous marriage, 41 year old Tooba Mohamed Yahya and their son, 20 year old Ahmed that started on October 20^th, continued with new damning revelations from police intercepts and video interrogations. The three accused have been charged with four counts of first-degree murder. On June 30, 2009, the bodies of Shafia’s three daughters, Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, their mother, Mohammad’s first wife in the polygamous marriage, were found in a Nissan Sentra automobile submerged in a lock in the Rideau Canal near Kingston, Ontario. 

Note, what Mohamed Shafia said during a call intercepted by Kingston Police in July, 2009 as played in court on Monday, November 14^th according to this Canada Press  report:

A Montreal man charged with killing his three daughters cursed them as "treacherous" for having boyfriends and said even if they came back to life 100 times he would "do the same again," court heard Monday.

"Even if, God forbid, they hoist us onto the gallows ... we accept it wholeheartedly," Mohammad Shafia is heard telling his wife and son on a police intercept one day before the three were arrested.

Court has heard that much of the family turmoil surrounded Zainab and her boyfriend, whom she married for one day, and relatives have testified that Shafia wanted to kill her. Yahya is heard on one intercept saying she knew Zainab was "already done," but she wishes the "two others" weren't.

"No Tooba, they were treacherous," Shafia says, likening them to prostitutes. "When I tell you to be patient, you tell me that it is hard. It isn't harder than watching them every hour with (boyfriends). For this reason whenever I see those pictures, I am consoled.

"I say to myself, 'You did well. Would they come back to life a hundred times, for you to do the same again,'" Shafia says on the intercepts, translated from their native Dari, a dialect from Afghanistan. "That is how hurt I am. Tooba, they betrayed us immensely. They violated us immensely. There can be no betrayal, no treachery, no violation more than this."

Shafia repeats his apparent threat about "a hundred times" on another intercept, saying, "If I have a cleaver in my hand, I will cut him/her in pieces."

"If we remain alive one night or one year, we have no tension in our hearts, (thinking that) our daughter is in the arms of this or that boy, in the arms of this or that man," Shafia says.

"May the devil...shit on their graves. Is that what a daughter should be? Would (a daughter) be such a whore?"

In yesterday’s Kingston trial proceeding, the accused son Ahmed, refused to acknowledge his participation in the crime during videotaped police interrogations, despite overwhelming forensic evidence. The Globe and Mail  noted:

Hamed was presented by the Kingston police with four pieces of evidence: cellphone records that showed he was in the Kingston area at a time when he insisted he was still in Niagara Falls; evidence that shards of headlight glass belonging to the Lexus were found at the lock; numerous incriminating remarks the three accused made, overheard on police wiretaps; and – perhaps the most difficult to explain away – a statement his mother had just given to police acknowledging that the three accused were in fact at the lock that night, and heard the Nissan containing the girls fall into the water with a splash.

Exactly what transpired she could not say, Tooba Mohammad Yahya added, because she fainted almost immediately.

In turn, two detectives questioned Hamed: Detective Constable Steve Koopman, who took a relaxed, almost conciliatory approach, even as he told Hamed he had no doubt he was guilty, because of the facts; and Sergeant Mike Boyles, who was more confrontational.

“Was this a train going down the tracks, something you couldn’t control?” Det. Constable Koopman said of the events that night. “It was probably your dad’s decision, I don’t think this was something you wanted to happen. … I know you miss your sisters.”

Sgt. Boyles later piled on the pressure: “There’s a lot of evidence, there’s no hiding this anymore.” But he, too, tried to appeal to Hamed’s sense of family honour and loyalty: “Zainab and Sahar, and Geeti, and Rona too – they would want me to find the truth.”

All four women drowned, autopsies showed, but where and when has never been established. Three of the victims had fresh bruises on their heads, and one of the car windows was wide open, leading police to believe the drowning took place before the Nissan tipped into the water.

As for his mother’s statement that she and the other two accused were in fact at the lock, Hamed seemed trapped. He could not agree with her, but neither was he willing to call his mother a liar. He was shown a video clip of her police statement, and could say nothing.

He asked to be taken back to his police cell.

Prosecutors allege the multiple deaths were a so-called “honour killing,” committed in a bid to restore the family’s “honour,” stained by the rebellious, independent-minded conduct of the three Shafia sisters, in particular the dating habits of the oldest two.

Rona Amir Mohammad, the first wife, who joined the rest of the family four months after they immigrated in June, 2007, was murdered as the final act of a long-simmering rivalry between the two wives, prosecutors contend.

Watch  this latest CBC News video on the Shafir family multiple honor killing trial.