Did Canadian honor killing end in death of 4 women?

[Whisper]

Fucking pussy doesnt have daddy to protect him in the real world

Son won't take stand in Ont. quadruple murder trial

KINGSTON, Ont. — A 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 will be the only one of the three accused not to take the stand in his defence. His mother, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42, spent 5 1/2 days on the witness stand and his father, Mohammad Shafia, 58, also testified.


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 to give opinion evidence. The assessment process was to 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," 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 presenting his evidence.

[,,,,]
Lots more at linkhttp://www.montrealgazette.com/news/take+stand+quadruple+murder+trial/6009478/story.html

[Whisper]

Prosecutor challenges relative’s portrayal of Shafia
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/prosecutor-challenges-relatives-portrayal-of-shafia/article2304126/

[VXIII]

This is a petty thing to say but I think Rona was much more beautiful than TooBitch, she had the beauty of a peaceful woman and I wish I had known her, I would have helped her get the fuck away from them along with Sahar and Geeti and Zainab, this story makes me cry, no woman should ever be treated like this, sorry I didnt know you Rona...

[Whisper]

KINGSTON—The trial in the high-profile mass “honour killing” case moved one step close to completion Wednesday morning as the defence rested and lawyers begin to prepare their closing statements.
The trial portion, which began at the 153-year-old limestone Frontenac County Courthouse here last October, ended with defence counsel attempting to parlay cultural references into explanations for the words and actions that the Crown has tried to use against their clients, immigrants who hail from Afghanistan.
The case has been closely followed both in Canada and around the world, not only because the four victims are family members, but also because of the physical and wiretap evidence in the case.
[...]
On Wednesday morning, the last witness was an anthropologist and former journalist, Nabi Misdaq, who offered expertise on Afghan culture and use of language, specifically Dari, also called Farsi in that society.
Defence lawyer Patrick McCann wanted to know how expletives are used in the Shafia’s home country, which they left 17 years ago before arriving in Montreal in 2007.
Misdaq said swear words are “very common” among Afghan men, and are used when he is “faced with something he thinks (had) nothing to do with him or was not his fault.”
e clarified that the words don’t mean that he will act on them. “They are not to be taken literally.”
Wiretap evidence — taken after the deaths occurred — has been captivating because it records a strident Shafia calling his dead daughters names like “whore” or “treacherous” and willing the devil to “s--- on their graves.”
“Is ‘devil shit on their graves’ comparable” to an expression in English in North America? McCann asked.
“The nearest would be, ‘To hell with them,’ Misdaq replied.
[...]
Hamed was revealed during the trial to have admitted being at the canal the night of the incident, seen the car go in the water, and not telling his parents or the police. He then faked an accident in Montreal to cover up the damage to the SUV.
The bug intercepts captured Shafia’s harsh diatribes, but also used his lectures, particularly to Hamed, on the primacy of “honour” in life.
They add both an emotional dimension to the case and, the Crown contends, a motive for the killings.
The sisters had been rebellious, taken unauthorized boyfriends, dressed provocatively, run away, spoken to authorities. The Crown alleges they were killed to recover the family’s “honour.”
The defence argument is that Zainab took the car without permission and that the joyride ended in tragedy.http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1117505

[Whisper]

http://i40.tinypic.com/2lx8sch.jpg
Tooba Yahya, centre, her husband Mohammad Shafia, top, and their son Hamed are escorted by police officers from the Frontenac County courthouse in Kingston on Wednesday.

KINGSTON—As the defence rested in the Shafia murder trial with an attempt to place Mohammad Shafia’s words and actions in the context of Afghan culture, his fate and that of his wife and son should be in the hands of a jury next week.

Justice Robert Maranger said closing statements by lawyers will begin on Monday, followed by his instructions to the jury on Wednesday.
The trial began at the 153-year-old limestone Frontenac County Courthouse here last October and has proceeded through 58 witnesses.
[...]
The dead, all drowned, three with bruises on their heads, were found on June 30, 2009. Their watery grave was a Nissan Sentra that was found submerged in a canal in Kingston, where the family had stopped after a trip to Niagara Falls.

On Wednesday morning, the last witness was an anthropologist and former journalist, Nabi Misdaq, who offered expertise on Afghan culture and use of language, specifically Dari, in that society.
[,,,]http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1117505--shafia-murder-trial-hears-final-witness?bn=1

[Whisper]

KINGSTON, Ont. – Jurors at the Shafia murder trial heard the case’s 58th and final witness Wednesday morning, 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.

“Jury, that’s all the evidence that’s going to be called in this trial,” Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger said afterward. “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. The judge will address the jurors Wednesday.

“The case will be in your hands Wednesday, Jan. 25,” Maranger said.
[...]

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Last+witness+testifies+Shafia+murder+trial/6014837/story.html

[Rockin Ma]

Has anyone else notice the come and go to court together? Wonder how much they can speak to each other and if any escorts speak their language.

[Whisper]

Has anyone else notice the come and go to court together? Wonder how much they can speak to each other and if any escorts speak their language.

actually I did month ago or so but then saw the van they come in is seperated into 3/4 cubbys and they are walled off from each other
What pisses me off is they shouldnt be allowed to see each other at all,,,they shouldve had that taken away from them

[Rockin Ma]

I agree Whisp. They should not be allowed to see each other.

[VXIII]

I noticed it but just thought it was the way jail is in Canada, here in America, there is no contact at all, not even letter writing if you are co-defendants, Toobitch hopefully will never see her precious Hamed again, who she so tried to protect, she threw her husband under the bus, train... Anyone who lives in Canada, is Life in prison really going to mean that or will it mean 7 years then they go on their merry ways? :confused3: Actually Im not positive but I think in America we even have seperate trials. not sure though...

[Whisper]

I noticed it but just thought it was the way jail is in Canada, here in America, there is no contact at all, not even letter writing if you are co-defendants, Toobitch hopefully will never see her precious Hamed again, who she so tried to protect, she threw her husband under the bus, train... Anyone who lives in Canada, is Life in prison really going to mean that or will it mean 7 years then they go on their merry ways? :confused3: Actually Im not positive but I think in America we even have seperate trials. not sure though...

They arent kept together in jail,
I know theres no contact and the jail vans like I said theres I believe 3 compartments,maybe 4 on the bigger vans
1 on each side and 1 in the back and theres a door with window to each compartment,but walls between them so they cant speak or anything
And the guards dont let them speak to and from the vans I just feel they shouldnt even have the comfort of seeing each other at all

[DamagedGoods]

She simply offers up, with such gravity and satisfaction you’d think she was quoting Plato, one of her nonsensical head-scratchers (my favourite, several times repeated, is, “Sir, God is up, my children are down.”0

Umm, does she really say this?

Is it followed by "and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!"?

[Whisper]

Laarhuis alleged that the women, who were either sleeping or already dead, were in the Nissan when someone positioned it in front of the lock, rolled down the window, got out and put it into drive.
This is the only part of the story that spooks me is they cant say if they were already dead or how they died


b/c they cant say if they were dead or how they were is what scares me and brings me to O.J and Casey Anthony trial
And the jury on those trials

[Whisper]

Kingston Mills locks add a chapter to their long history 7

KINGSTON - For almost two centuries, these locks at Kingston Mills have represented a picturesque piece of Canadian nautical history.
With post-War of 1812 navigational ingenuity allowing passage through the Rideau Canal all the way to Ottawa, they are, in essence a memorial to people like Lt.-Col. John By and the Duke of Wellington, who were vital in building them.
No matter what happens in a courtroom here this week, there will soon be four names added to this serene location’s lore.
Zanaib, Sahar, Geeti Shafia and Rona Amir Mohammad.
The four Montreal females — three teenage sisters and their stepmom — were found in a submerged car here after going into the canal June 30, 2009.
[..]
It has people who know the area scratching their head.
“The whole thing is so strange and so unnecessary,” said Lloyd Wilson, who lives just steps from the locks and has never seen anything like this before in his 30 years here. “It’s very sad.”
He said plans are in the works to mark their memory permanently.
“We are working on a plaque to remember them by,” he said. “Maybe in the spring we can erect it.”
e said neighbours are determined to have this memorial.
“I think of these women everyday I drive by here,” said Wilson. “This whole community here has not forgotten them and never will.”
Closing arguments will commence tomorrow in the murder trial of Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba and their son Hamed, all of whom have been on trial since Oct. 20, 2011. Three top defence lawyers — Peter Kemp, David Crowe and Patrick McCann — will have their opportunity present arguments to the jury about their client’s version of events.
It is expected the Crown — represented by Gerard Laarhuis and Laurie Lacelle — will present the prosecution’s arguments to the 12-member jury on Wednesday.
Judge Robert Maranger is expected to take much of Thursday to instruct the jury, before handing the case to them.
It has been a dramatic case with lots of twists, turns and tears. It has had an international feel with lots of focus on culture, religion and on modern police work.
This jury will decide how these women were killed but one thing that won’t be debated is that they died here.
No matter what happens, these four women have become part of Kingston Mills history, right along with Lt.-Col. By.
Wilson said he and other neighbours, who love the locks, will ensure that will always be the case.
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/01/23/kingston-mills-locks-add-a-chapter-to-their-long-history

[Whisper]

Shafia trial: ‘There was simply no time for a murder,’ defence lawyer argues

Mohammad Shafia, 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,” said lawyer Peter Kemp, who represents Shafia, in his two-hour closing address to jurors.

Kemp spoke first as the three-month-long murder trial moved into its final phase, with lawyers and the judge addressing jurors before they begin deliberating.
[...]
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 — 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 educations 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.http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/24/shafia-trial-there-was-simply-no-time-for-a-murder-defence-lawyer-argues/

[Whisper]

Canadian justice system has the tools deal with ‘honour killings’: study
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/24/canadian-justice-system-has-the-tools-deal-with-honour-killings-study-says/

[Whisper]

Shafia son 'guilty of being stupid': lawyer

KINGSTON, Ont. - A young man accused of killing his three sisters and the first of his father's two wives is only guilty of being "stupid" and "morally blameworthy," but neither he nor his co-accused parents deserve to be in this "Kafkaesque" scenario, court heard Wednesday.
[...]
Hamed's lawyer told the jury Wednesday in his closing statement that the only reasonable conclusion they can come to is that the deaths of sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, as well as Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, were a tragic accident witnessed by his client.
"Hamed is guilty of being stupid, morally blameworthy, but other than that, he was not responsible for the girls' death, nor were his parents and (it's) time to put an end to this Kafkaesque 2 1/2 years they've been going through since their arrest," Patrick McCann told the jury.
[...]
Four months after the family's July 22, 2009, arrests, Hamed told a university student hired on the sly by Shafia as a private investigator that he was there when the car went in the canal. He said he had followed them from the motel as a concerned brother. He rear-ended them near the scene, he said, and while he was picking up pieces of headlight he heard a splash and ran to the edge of the canal, dropping some of the pieces there.
[....]
It was a terrible decision not to call 911, McCann said, but he was scared. When he tried to tell the truth later on the police didn't believe him.
But the Crown alleges that story is a "complete fabrication" cooked up by Hamed in an attempt to explain the evidence.
The Crown says the girls and Rona were dead, or at least incapacitated, before they went into the canal. It's been suggested by the defence that the Crown theory is the four people were drowned in one of the other areas of open water around the scene then placed in the car.McCann, as well as the lawyers for Shafia and Yahya who addressed the jury Tuesday, scoffed at that notion.
"How would it be done?" McCann said. "Just the practicality of doing it, it's implausible. It's absolutely unthinkable almost that you could do that. Four different people, quietly like lambs to the slaughter ... These women, they weren't lambs going to the slaughter."

The Crown alleges the accused tried to get the car to go into the water under its own power, but it got hung up on the ledge, so the family's other car was used to push it in.
McCann took the jury through other interpretations of the evidence, including that marks on the bottom of the car that the Crown points to as evidence it got hung up on the canal edge, are really from a rocky outcropping at the scene. McCann suggested the car took quite a different route than the one put forward by the Crown.
There is no piece of evidence that disproves Hamed's story, McCann said.
Crown attorney Laurie Lacelle disagreed in the beginning of her closing arguments, which she will conclude Thursday. Hamed's story cannot explain why the seats were reclined all the way, Lacelle said. It wouldn't be natural to drive like that, she told the jury.
What's more likely, is that the soon-to-be victims were sleeping in the car around 2 a.m., waiting with their mother, as she testified, while Hamed and Shafia were booking a hotel room, Lacelle said. When Hamed and Shafia returned to the locks — though Yahya denied this is where they were waiting — the girls and Rona were still sleeping and the seats were still reclined when they were killed, Lacelle suggested.
"After murdering four individuals, Shafia, Tooba and Hamed could hardly be expected to re-adjust the seats to accord with the accidental driving mishap that they wanted to use to explain the deaths," Lacelle told the jury. "It's just one more detail they didn't think about."
All three defence lawyers also took issue with the notion that the four deaths were the result of a mass, so-called honour killing. The evidence is simply not there to suggest that motive, McCann said.
He went through the evidence of the girls' supposed misbehaviour, including dating boys and not wearing hijabs, that the Crown has pointed to as motive and noted a few points where it has been proven one of the girls lied.
"These kids were just like most teenagers: pushing the envelope, trying to get as much freedom as they could, trying to get their own way," McCann said.
"That's teenage life and inevitably there are problems at home when that sort of thing is going on ... That is what the Crown is presenting to you, ladies and gentlemen, as evidence that this was an honour killing, that these girls were dishonouring the family and therefore had to be killed ... That is really quite preposterous."
Lacelle took the jury through all the evidence the Crown says points to an honour-based motive for killing the girls and Rona, whose values clashed with those of the three accused and who were becoming increasingly difficult to control. But she told the jury it is not their task to determine whether these were honour killings, just if they are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the three accused planned and carried out the murders of Zainab, Sahar, Geeti and Rona.http://news.ca.msn.com/canada/shafia-son-guilty-of-being-stupid-lawyer

[Whisper]

Shafia trial evidence points to 'murder,' Crown says
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/01/25/shafia-trial.html

[VXIII]

With the seats reclined have they said yet how they were killed> i would think long before 2 am they were killed...

[Whisper]

With the seats reclined have they said yet how they were killed> i would think long before 2 am they were killed...
Yeah they were drowned
I cant believe they cant test to see what water was in the lungs,chlorinated or lake/river/lock water
Also buying a cheaper car a day or so before the murders b/c you dont want to ruin your expensive SUV isnt the sharpest tack in the box either
Hope they are using using up every cent of their money on legal fees,send them back to where they came from broke after they serve their 25 years

Shafia trial delayed because of security issue

Closing arguments in the first-degree murder trial of three Montrealers accused of drowning four family members in Kingston, Ont., have been delayed after the courthouse was cleared out because of a security issue Thursday.

The prosecutor was to continue closing remarks to the jury Thursday morning before everyone was asked to leave the courthouse, and the accused were taken away in a van, according to CBC's Melinda Dalton. The trial has reportedly been delayed until 1 p.m. ET.

A defence lawyer told CBC's Dan Halton that the evacuation of the courtroom could have been prompted by a bomb threat.

But Kingston police Staff Sgt. Bill Kennedy would only confirm that "there's a security concern and we've been made aware of it."

Laurie Lacelle began her address to the jury Wednesday by saying there is enough physical evidence alone to convict Mohammad Shafia, 59, Tooba Yahya, 42, and Hamed Shafia, 21, of murder.
The accused have pleaded not guilty.
[...]
The seats in the Nissan were reclined and none of the women were wearing seatbelts, facts which go against the defence's claim that the women went on a joyride and accidentally drove the car into the canal, Lacelle told the jury.

While the Crown does not have to prove motive, ample evidence has been given during the four month trial proving the women tainted the family's perception of honour, the prosecutor said, and were killed because of it.

Amir would have never stuck to the story given by the accused and had asked for a divorce at least once, so she was included in the murder plot, Lacelle said.

The trial has generated significant interest from the public, and people waited in line for hours to grab a seat in the small court room. Several people were turned way Wednesday when the 150 seat room filled to capacity.

After Lacelle finishes her closing arguments, the judge will then start his charge to the jury members, who will then begin their deliberations. http://news.ca.msn.com/canada/shafia-trial-delayed-because-of-security-issue

[Whisper]

Shafia trial resumes after bomb scare prompts delay

The Shafia family murder trial in Kingston, Ont. resumed Thursday afternoon with increased security after a bomb scare delayed proceedings earlier in the day.
Justice Robert Maranger told the jury to "expect the unexpected," which was greeted by laughs as they filed back in.
Spectators slowly made their way back into the courtroom for the trial after police implemented tight security procedures.
Maranger told the jury that the Crown would finish its closing arguments Thursday, and he would give his final instructions to the jury Friday.
Earlier Thursday, journalists and spectators who had lined up hours before court was scheduled to begin were suddenly told by police they had to leave.
Police would only say there was a "security concern," but a source told The Canadian Press that a bomb threat prompted the evacuation.
"I can neither confirm nor deny in regards to specifically a bomb, but we are just stating at this point in time it is a security concern," Const. Steve Koopman told The Canadian Press. "As you can see we're taking it extremely seriously."
Mohammad Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed, 21, have each pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder.
They were evacuated from the courthouse Thursday in a police prisoner vehicle.
Koopman couldn't say if the security threat was directly related to the Shafia trial.
[..]
The Crown began its final arguments on Wednesday and was expected to wrap up later today.
Three defence lawyers presented their final arguments Tuesday and Wednesday.
[....]http://m.ctv.ca/topstories/20120126/shafia-jury-crown-final-arguments-120126.html

[Whisper]

Shafia trial likely up to the jury Friday

KINGSTON, Ont. — The case against three people accused of killing half their family over honour will likely be in the hands of a jury by the end of the day.

The jury in Kingston, Ont., has been hearing evidence in the Shafia family murder trial since Oct. 20, and now all that's left before they start deliberating to consider their verdict is to listen to the judge's final instructions today.
[...]http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120127/OTT-shafia-trial-friday-jury-120127/20120127/?hub=OttawaHome

[Whisper]

Shafia accused could be convicted on lesser charge
Second-degree murder verdict possible, judge says

Jurors can deliver a verdict of second-degree murder against some or all of the three Montrealers accused of killing four family members, the trial judge instructed jury members on Friday.
[...]
But in his 200-page charge to the jury, Justice Robert Maranger said the jury could find the accused guilty of the lesser charge, which doesn't require the same proof of planning and premeditation.
In the case of first degree, Maranger told the jury in Kingston, Ont., jurors must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused killed the four victims and that the killings were planned and deliberate, he said.
"A planned murder is one that is committed as result as of the scheme or plan that has been previously formulated or designed," he said.
For each of the accused, he told the jury, the verdicts available to them are first-degree murder or second-degree murder. He reminded the jury that the accused do not have to prove their account of events. The burden of proof falls on the Crown.
Aiding and abetting
Maranger also instructed the jury on the aspect of aiding and abetting. In Canadian law, a defendant can be found guilty of an offence if the Crown proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a person either assisted in the commission of an offence by the principal offender or encouraged a principal offender to commit an offence.
The Crown does not have to prove both, the judge told the jury.
"Please remember the question for you to decide is what the accused actually intended," he said. "If you are left with a reasonable doubt whether the accused had intent to aid or abet, you'd find the accused not guilty."
Earlier, Maranger said prosecution would face a near impossible task to prove with absolute certainty every element of their case.
Their responsibility is to find proof beyond a reasonable doubt, Justice Robert Maranger told the jury in .
Maranger asked them to carefully consider the evidence presented before them during the extensive four-month trial and cautioned them that their responsibility is significant. They are expected to begin deliberations today after more than four months of witnesses, arguments and evidence.
Throughout the trial, the defence maintained the women's deaths were an accident — the result of a joyride with an inexperienced driver at the wheel.
Courtroom full throughout trial
However, the prosecution countered that the deaths were cold and deliberate murder — planned, deliberated, executed and covered up equally by each of the accused.
The motive, the Crown asserted, was the restoration of the family's honour, tainted by the women's behaviour and alleged betrayals.
The court has heard testimony from teachers, social workers, technological experts, police, medical professionals, family members and two of the accused themselves in 40 days of court proceedings.
The trial has garnered significant attention as well, drawing media from across Ontario and Quebec and a mass of spectators who would line up early in the morning for a seat in the 150-person courtroom.
On more than one day, people were turned away because the room was at capacity.
[..]
Jurors will deliberate through the weekend
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/01/27/shafia-trial.html


WONDER HOW LONG IT WILL TAKE>>>?
I had a stupid dream about this this morning and only took them a minute to walk out ,vote GUILTY and walk back in lol

[Whisper]

To me if you buy a cheaper car for the occasion and plan a fucking family last vacation around the event thats premeditation but they think they have all the answers covered
And something tells me b/c of his age and brainwashed by daddy and culture Hammer Toe will get less then mom and dad do

[Whisper]

Honour killings’ trial now in hands of jury

After a long day of a judge’s instructions, the fate of three Afghan-Canadian immigrants charged with committing multiple “honour killings” is in the hands of the jurors.

The seven-woman, five-man jury retired late Friday afternoon after Mr. Justice Robert Maranger of Superior Court delivered his charge, spelling out the core issue the panel must determine: “This was either an accident or an intentional act that was made to look like an accident.”

He told the jurors they have three options for any or all of the accused: They can be convicted of first-degree murder, which broadly means a killing that was planned ahead of time; of second-degree murder, which usually means it was deliberate but not planned; or they can be acquitted.

Once again, this time in a cold rain, spectators began lining up well before 7 a.m. for a spot in the big courtroom.

They included two of the surviving children of the two oldest defendants, businessman Mohammad Shafia, 59, and his second wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42. As the jury filed in, the teenagers waved and smiled at their parents.
[...]
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/honour-killings-trial-now-in-hands-of-jury/article2317510/

[Whisper]

[...]
Also in court was a member of the Afghan diplomatic mission in Ottawa, who took extensive notes as the proceedings got under way.[...]
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/honour-killings-trial-now-in-hands-of-jury/article2317510/

[Whisper]

Shafia jury mulling first- and second-degree murder
http://m.ctv.ca/topstories/20120127/shafia-murder-trial-jury-120127.html

[Whisper]

What the Shafia jurors didn’t hear

KINGSTON, Ont. — Jurors began deciding the fate Friday of three members of a Montreal family accused of killing four other family members, unaware that there was an eyewitness to some events at the isolated spot where the victims were found dead.
[...]
The lone eyewitness did not testify at the trial and jurors were not told of his existence
His account is among dozens of pieces of information that was withheld from the jurors, in some cases because of rulings by a judge before or during the trial. The information could not be reported publicly until the jury retired to begin deliberations.
An eight-year-old boy testified, at a hearing held in February 2010, that he saw two vehicles at the canal at 1:40 a.m. on June 30. The boy, who lives in a house on a spit of land 200 metres from the canal, was awake, getting a drink of water when he heard what he described as a “splash, kind of a crash.” The boy went to his rear deck, which affords a clear view of the canal. He saw two vehicles, one larger vehicle with its headlights on, illuminating another, smaller vehicle, with its headlights off.
The smaller vehicle was on the grass “near the water,” the boy testified at the preliminary hearing, a proceeding that was conducted to determine if there was enough evidence to put the accused on trial. The larger vehicle appeared to be on the road.

The boy said he also heard another sound, like a car horn, “like just ‘beep’ and then gone.” He heard it a few minutes after the “splash-crash.” He did not see or hear any people. The boy said he watched for a few minutes, then went back inside his house and went back to bed at 2 a.m. Police interviewed him later that morning.

The boy’s story appears to contradict the account of Hamed, who told a man in a jailhouse conversation, that he followed his joyriding sister to the canal in the family’s Lexus and rear-ended the Nissan before his sister accidentally drove into the water. But in Hamed’s account, the two vehicles did not go to the canal until after 2 a.m., the time at which the family checked into a motel.

Jurors also did not hear about an incident in which Shafia waved a knife at his wife, Yahya, and threatened to stab her, according to one witness.

Fazil Javid, Yahya’s brother, described the incident when he testified at the preliminary hearing on Feb. 23, 2010. Javid said it happened at the Shafia home in Montreal a week after the deaths, when many relatives had gathered to offer their sympathy to the grieving family.

“He had threatened . . . my sister,” said Javid, who lives in Sweden.

Javid said he was leaving the Shafia house, walking to a car, when he heard a commotion behind him. He turned to see that his sister, Yahya, was crying, coming after him, asking him not to leave and making some sort of gesture with her hand across her throat, suggesting that she was fed up.

Shafia was following her with a large kitchen knife that he estimated had a six-inch blade. Javid said another one of his brothers who was there was restraining Shafia.

“Hamed was trying to take his mother back inside and he was telling his father that don’t make too much noise,” Javid testified.
[..]
Jurors also did not hear about a purported scheme to send Rona Mohammad back to Afghanistan from Canada.

Montreal lawyer Sabine Venturelli, who handled the Shafia family’s immigration matters, testified at the trial but she was not permitted to recount a telephone conversation with Zarmina Fazel, an aunt of Yahya’s who lives in Montreal. Fazel helped the Shafia family and sponsored Mohammad to come to Canada on a visitor visa.

Venturelli testified at the preliminary hearing in February 2009 that Mohammad was seeking permanent residency and her application was progressing well, when the lawyer received a phone call from Fazel in April or May 2009. Fazel, who spoke French and often translated for Shafia, was speaking on his behalf.

“(She was) telling me that Mrs. Rona was causing problems to the Shafia family and that Mr. Shafia was asking me to close the file of Mrs. Rona and to have her sent back to Afghanistan,” Venturelli testified at the preliminary hearing. “He was offering me an honorarium of $10,000.”

Prosecutors argued at the trial that they should be permitted to ask Venturelli about the $10,000 offer but defence lawyers argued it was hearsay and that if the Crown wanted to put the evidence in front of jurors, they could call Fazel as a witness. Prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis told the judge “that’s another matter,” during a discussion held in the absence of jurors. It was an obtuse reference to the fact that Fazel cited sudden memory loss about the $10,000 call and other events when she testified at the preliminary hearing.
[..]
While jurors heard considerable evidence that revolved around a lengthy police interrogation of Yahya, they did not know that Yahya fought to keep the interrogation out of their hands.

During a hearing held in February 2010, David Crowe, Yahya’s lawyer, argued that Yahya did not understand the process during the interrogation and she was offered improper inducements in exchange for her answers.

Judge Stephen Hunter concluded that while the interrogator had a strategic plan, so, too, did Yahya.

“The entirety of the evidence suggests that her consistent search for what proof the police had continued throughout,” Hunter said, in ruling that her statements were made voluntarily and were admissible. The key decision permitted prosecutors to put the entire 7-1/2-hour videotape in front of the jurors.

During the recording, Yahya is seen telling the police officer that the three accused were at the canal when the Nissan Sentra plunged into the water. When Yahya testified during the trial, she said she was not at the canal. She said she had lied to the interrogator about being at the scene because she wanted him to leave her alone and she believed it would prevent her son Hamed from being tortured.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/27/shafia-trial-jurors-begin-deciding-fate-of-family-accused-in-honour-killing/

[Whisper]

Shafia jury to start first full day of deliberations on Saturday

KINGSTON, Ont. - A jury in eastern Ontario starts its first full day of deliberations Saturday to decide the fate of three people accused of killing four family members over honour.

The jury in the Shafia family murder trial in Kingston was sent to deliberate Friday afternoon after listening to the judge's final instructions for more than five hours, and they called it a day at about 6 p.m.

They will start fresh Saturday morning, looking at the mountain of evidence from 58 witnesses and 165 exhibits, presented by the Crown and defence since the trial began Oct. 20.
[...]http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/breakingnews/shafia-jury-to-start-first-full-day-of-deliberations-138237029.html

[Whisper]

Still waiting they are sequestered until verdict

'You will decide what happened,' judge tells Shafia jury

KINGSTON, ONT. - The jury is out.

The deliberations have begun.
And the collective future of Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Yahya and their son Hamed is in their hands.
Seven ordinary women, five men and 12 suitcases.
Court officials whisked them all off to a hotel where they will be sequestered in the evenings until they deliver a verdict.
They began their deliberations at 4:30 p.m but then broke for the evening at 5:45 p.m.
How long they will take is anybody’s guess.
They can take all the time they need.
Justice for teen sisters Zainab, Sahar and Geeti, as well as their stepmother Rona, is what is at stake.
During the day the jury will work at the Frontenac County Court House where the suspects will be held in waiting.
A special courtroom has been set up for the dozens of media to congregate while they await a verdict.
Meanwhile the jury have three months of testimony to sift through -- including nearly 60 witnesses.
They have a big decision to make. In his seven-hour charge Justice Robert Maranger told the jury they have three options. One is to find the defendants guilty of first-degree murder or to find them not guilty of it.
He said they call also find all three of them, or one or more of them, guilty of second degree murder.
For the jury it comes down to this.
These Montreal women were either brutally murdered in a scheme to protect family honour or died by misadventure in a bizarre set of circumstances.
Now that the jury is out, it’s easier to make the point that the story the defence tried to sell was plain swinging for the fences as one could ever imagine. The accused claim that the four women had gone out for a joy ride and to look for phone cards at 2 a.m. near Kingston and accidently ended up on the canal road, where the Kingston Mills locks are situated, just off Hwy. 15.
They told the jury that Hamed, who was supposed to drive back to Montreal ahead of the rest of the family, had followed them down there and accidently smashed into the rear of them.
He then got out of his vehicle, picked up from the roadway the debris from a damaged headlight when suddenly the car carrying his three sisters and his stepmother headed toward the lock and over into the water. He says he grabbed a rope and tried to dangle it into the black water but no one responded. Afraid of what his father might say, he then fled the scene and drove to Montreal where he also got into an accident and damaged the same headlight.
The crown, of course, allege the whole thing was staged. They believe the women were drowned first, placed in the car, that it was nudged over the locks with a second car and that all four women were murdered with premeditation.
[...]
So who does the jury believe?
A strange story of an accident, or a strong circumstantial case by the crown?
We should find out very soon.http://www.torontosun.com/2012/01/27/you-will-decide-what-happened-judge-tells-shafia-jury

[Whisper]

Shafia trial jury ends 1st day of deliberations
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/01/28/shafia-murder-trial-jury-deliberates.html


I prefer my dream of them walking out then back in and screaming GUILTY
Drove my husband nuts all day waiting for a damned verdict checking phone and everything while we were out all day

[sheevaa]

I don't think they can find them guilty of 1st degree murder. Unfortunately they don't have enough evidence for it. With all the lying done by all of the Shafias, the journals and testimony of all the girls/women living in fear, the car evidence, the car wire recordings, and the trauma on almost all of their heads, though, I could see them getting 2nd degree.

With all of that I truly believe they are 100% guilty, but I couldn't give them 1st degree without SOLID proof, either.

[Whisper]

I don't think they can find them guilty of 1st degree murder. Unfortunately they don't have enough evidence for it. With all the lying done by all of the Shafias, the journals and testimony of all the girls/women living in fear, the car evidence, the car wire recordings, and the trauma on almost all of their heads, though, I could see them getting 2nd degree.

With all of that I truly believe they are 100% guilty, but I couldn't give them 1st degree without SOLID proof, either.

I dont think they will either and I seem to feel Hammer Toe will get even less b/c they will say he was influenced by daddy and culture

[sheevaa]

My concern is that this is in Canada. I swear if it comes to "2 years and community service/taking time served off" I am going to scream. I mean, literally scream.
Whisp, do you have any idea what the maximum sentence 2nd degree murder is?

[Whisper]

My concern is that this is in Canada. I swear if it comes to "2 years and community service/taking time served off" I am going to scream. I mean, literally scream.
Whisp, do you have any idea what the maximum sentence 2nd degree murder is?

we are jaded/tainted by the OJ and casey anthony trials
I think b/c of the magnitude it was the 25 years(no Dangerous Offender) b/c of the way it was done
Ill be at the boat launch when they are deported
According to my friends hubby(mind you hes not on the case but a judge here in the city,shes a lawyer)
They both said it will be most likely 25 years and prob no parole hearing for 15 instead of the 10 and immediate deportation upon release

[Whisper]

My concern is that this is in Canada. I swear if it comes to "2 years and community service/taking time served off" I am going to scream. I mean, literally scream.
Whisp, do you have any idea what the maximum sentence 2nd degree murder is?


The Sentences Resulting From First Degree Murder, Second Degree Murder And Manslaughter
http://info.lawyershop.ca/criminal/index.php/archives/2008/11/27/the-sentences-resulting-from-first-degree-murder-second-degree-murder-and-manslaughter/


our murderer was convicted of second degree and hes not allowed to apply until 15 years although its common knowledge he will do each day of the 25

[Whisper]

Thats for here (Ontario)

[Rockin Ma]

ooooo this is tense. I'm anxious for this verdict too?

Are we placing bets?

I think dad and son will get second and yahoo will get a Not Guilty.

I'm not saying that's what I think should happen. I'm just predicting.

[Whisper]

ooooo this is tense. I'm anxious for this verdict too?

Are we placing bets?

I think dad and son will get second and yahoo will get a Not Guilty.

I'm not saying that's what I think should happen. I'm just predicting.

Im thinking mom and dad will get second and Hammer Toe Jam will get less b/c of age and culture they will somehow take him as brainwashed
they are back deliberating but no verdict as of yet

[Whisper]

Jury deliberations continue Sunday in Kingston in the trial of three people accused of killing four family members in 2009.

It's expected the jury will take several days to reach a verdict, after, on Friday, the judge charged them with the task of sorting through the mountain of evidence and coming to a verdict.

"There's a sense of anticipation, this has been a long trial, it's been a complex trial," said CityNews reporter Pam Seatle, who is in Kingston. "There has been a lot of evidence presented, a lot of witnesses, a lot of transcripts to go through - it's difficult to say when a decision will be reached."
Perhaps the problem is the firm decision the judge expects [...]
http://www.680news.com/news/national/article/324617--jury-continues-deliberations-in-shafia-family-murder-trial

[Whisper]

Heres the story from American Journalist point of view,no diff then Canadian point of view so cant be that we are "targeting them"

Kingston, Ontario (CNN) -- A jury in Kingston, Ontario, resumes its deliberations Sunday in the "honor" murder trial of three members of a Montreal family who are accused of killing four relatives.
[...]
The family members were all recent immigrants to Canada from Afghanistan. They have all pleaded not guilty.
Sunday will be the second day of deliberations for the seven women and five men on the jury.
The three Shafia sisters -- Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13 -- were found dead inside a car that plunged into the Rideau Canal in Kingston on June 30, 2009. Shafia's first wife, 50-year-old Rona Amir Mohammad, also died.
Prosecutors allege the girls' father, mother and brother all plotted to kill the four women in an "honor" murder. Investigators claim that hours of wiretapped conversations reveal a premeditated plan to punish rebellious, Westernized daughters and their permissive advocate, Rona.
Shafia and Yahya admitted on the stand that they were upset with Zainab for running off to marry a Pakistani man they hated, that Sahar wore revealing clothes and had secret boyfriends, and little Geeti was failing in school and calling social workers to get her out of a home in turmoil.
Prosecutors are trying to convince the jury that under instructions from his father, Hamed Shafia used the family Lexus to ram the other family car carrying the women into the canal. The shattered headlight on the Lexus, they claim, matches the damage on the rear bumper of the family Nissan in which the women were found dead.
Investigators also believe the victims might have died before they hit the water, because they were unable to escape despite their seat belts being unbuckled and the car being submerged in just 7 feet of water.
In the three-month-long trial, Shafia testified, "My children did a lot of cruelty toward me," as he wept openly on the stand. He went on to say he believed his children "betrayed" him by dating and he did not hide his anger, saying a father would never expect that kind of behavior from this daughters.
In taking the stand, Shafia swore to tell the truth on the Quran and he again invoked the holy book to say Islam does not condone killing people to preserve a family's honor.
In a direct response to a question from prosecutor Laurie Lacelle, Shafia said, "To kill someone, you can't regain your respect and honor. Respected lady, you should know that. In our religion, a person who kills his wife or daughter, there is nothing more dishonorable . How is it possible that someone would do that to their children, respected lady?"
"You might do it," Lacelle calmly replied, "if you thought they were whores." Shafia had used that term in a conversation captured by wiretaps.
Investigators have played hours of the wiretap recordings in court, alleging many conversations involving the three suspects prove they were plotting murder.
In some of the most shocking conversations, Shafia launched into a rant about his daughters' behavior.
"I say to myself, you did well. Would they come back to life a hundred times, you should so the same again," he says. And in another played in court and translated from the Afghan language Dari, he says, "May the devil defecate on their graves! This is what a daughter should be? Would a daughter be such a whore?"
Shafia and his lawyers tried to explain that his shocking words are traditional expressions in Dari that should not be translated literally.
But the jury also heard from an expert witness on honor murders -- a term CNN is using in the interest of clarity rather than the more common "honor killings" because the latter phrase does not properly describe the alleged crime.
That witness, University of Toronto professor Shahrzad Mojab, said that in some families, honor is worth more than life.
In an interview with CNN, Mojab said that many times, honor crimes are calculated acts that involve more than one family member.
"There is a very important difference between honor killing and violence against women in the form of domestic violence. It is plotted, it is premeditated." Mojab said.
"What we need to understand is that the male power and the male desire for the control of the woman's body and the woman's sexuality -- the honor resides in that sort of understanding and the ownership of women's body and sexuality," he said. "So when that is being presented in a way that is not acceptable to the social norm, then the only way the honor can be restored is by purifying that. And the purification is through blood."
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/29/world/americas/canada-honor-murder/index.html?hpt=ju_c2

[Whisper]

ALL 3 GUILTY FIRST DEGREE MURDER


A jury in Kingston, Ontario, on Sunday convicted three members of a Montreal family in "honor" murders of four relatives, according to CNN Canada affiliate CTV.



Mohammed Shafia, 58; his wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42; and their son, Hamed, 21, were convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of Shafia's three teenage daughters and his first wife in his polygamous marriage.



The family members were all recent immigrants to Canada from Afghanistan.



The three Shafia sisters -- Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13 -- were found dead inside a car that plunged into the Rideau Canal in Kingston on June 30, 2009. Shafia's first wife, 50-year-old Rona Amir Mohammad, also died.



Investigators said that hours of wiretapped conversations revealed a premeditated plan to punish rebellious, Westernized daughters and their permissive advocate, Rona Amir Mohammad. http://www.cnn.com/JUSTICE/





MORE TO COME

[Whisper]

KINGSTON, Ont. — Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya and their son Hamed Mohammad Shafia have been found guilty of first-degree murder in the drowning deaths of four other family members — including three teenage sisters — after Canada’s first mass honour killings trial.

The three suspects - a mother, father and son - were called back to the courthouse in Kingston, Ont. shortly after 1 p.m. Sunday.

The 12 jurors can find each accused guilty of first-or second-degree murder or they can find them not guilty, Judge Robert Maranger of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice said in his closing remarks on Friday.

Jurors began deliberating Friday at 6 p.m. to consider whether prosecutors proved that Afghan immigrant Mohammad Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed, 21, are each guilty of four counts of first-degree murder.

The accused pleaded not guilty, prompting a trial that lasted more than three months and heard from 58 witnesses. Three of the 10-member Shafia family's children were found dead in a submerged car discovered June 30, 2009, at the bottom of a shallow canal in Kingston, in eastern Ontario.

Sisters Zainab Shafia, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, had drowned. Mohammad was Shafia's first wife in the polygamous family, though her identity was concealed to circumvent Canadian immigration laws. Experts were not able to conclude how or where the victims drowned.

Prosecutors contend that the victims were incapacitated, either by being drowned or rendered unconscious, before they were placed inside the family's Nissan Sentra and the Sentra was pushed into the canal.

The accused mother and father have maintained that their oldest daughter took the car without permission from the motel where the family had stopped overnight. They suggested she went for a joyride and crashed the vehicle into the water.

Prosecutors allege that the family's other vehicle, a Lexus SUV, was used to push the Sentra over a stone lip and into the water. The Lexus was not at the canal that morning, according to the statements and testimony of Shafia and Yahya.


More to come... http://www.montrealgazette.com/Shafia+mother+father+found+guilty+four+counts+firs t+degree+murder/6069325/story.html#ixzz1ksRQaySw

[Whisper]

No chance of parole for 25 years

[golanvern]

Too bad we don't have the DP here; can't wait to get back to Kingston Monday for work - there'll be a party happening somewhere. Right now, here in Montreal this news is making all channels and stations -- as it should.

Let 'em rot.

[Whisper]

Too bad we don't have the DP here; can't wait to get back to Kingston Monday for work - there'll be a party happening somewhere. Right now, here in Montreal this news is making all channels and stations -- as it should.

Let 'em rot.

My husband and son are going there this week for Motorhead concert

[Whisper]

GUILTY! First Degree Murder Verdicts Reached in Shafia Honor Killing Trial


GUILTY
http://i44.tinypic.com/2079ahf.jpg
GUILTY! Honor killers Mohammad Shafia, front, Tooba Yahya, centre and Hamed Shafia.

Sharia did not prevail, justice was served.



KINGSTON, Ont. — After Canada’s first mass-honour-killings trial, three members of a Montreal family have all been found guilty of first-degree murder in the drowning deaths of four other family members — including three teenage sisters.

A jury on Sunday handed down its guilty verdicts for Mohammad Shafia and Tooba Mohammad Yahya, as well as their 21-year-old son, Hamed.

They had been charged with murder after the bodies of three Shafia sisters — Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and 13-year-old Geeti — were discovered in a submerged vehicle in a canal near Kingston, in June 2009.

Also in the vehicle was Rona Amir Mohammad, the 52-year-old first wife of Shafia, whom he married in his native Afghanistan before the polygamous family moved to Canada in 2007 and settled in Montreal.

A conviction for first-degree murder carries with it an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

http://i41.tinypic.com/16ld3wy.jpg

Sahar Shafia, left, Zainab, top, and Geeti,Rona
[...]http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2012/01/breaking-verdict-reached-in-shafia-honor-killing-trial.html

[sheevaa]

Holy crap. I can't believe it. I'm in shock that they actually got what they deserved. Justice is served.

Whisp, thank you so much for keeping us all posted on this for so long. You da best!

[Whisper]

Holy crap. I can't believe it. I'm in shock that they actually got what they deserved. Justice is served.

Whisp, thank you so much for keeping us all posted on this for so long. You da best!

thanks sheevaa and yw I actually did a happy dance around the livingroom watching it on tv

[Whisper]

The final installment of the Christie Blatchford series on this
I love her columns


Christie Blatchford: No honour in ‘cold-blooded, shameless’ murder of Shafia girls

KINGSTON, Ont. — The Afghan parents and brother of three teenage girls and the woman they loved like a mother have been convicted of first-degree murder.
“It is difficult to conceive of a more heinous, more despicable and more honourless crime,” Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Maranger said Sunday after the jury foreman had read aloud the verdicts.

Looking directly at Mohammad Shafia, 58, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42 and their oldest son Hamed as they stood before him in the prisoners’ box for the last time, the judge concluded with a stinging denunciation.
“The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameless murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your twisted notion of honour, a notion of honour that is founded upon the domination and control of women, a sick notion of honour that has absolutely no place in any civilized society.”
By using the words “honourless” and “shameless”, Maranger was tossing back at Shafia some of the very epithets he used so often when speaking about his dead daughters.

The mass honour slaying of Zainab, Sahar and Geeti – respectively 19, 17 and 13 – and 52-year-old Rona Mohammad Amir, Shafia’s other, sadly barren, wife, ranks among the worst in the sordid history of honour crimes.
It was an electric finale for a case that got international attention for the horrific “honour” motive which drove the crime and for a great, rollicking trial which featured shocking wiretapped evidence, galling testimony and even a bomb threat.
At its very heart, as prosecutors argued, were not only the three lost teens and Amir, but also the very notion of what is a girl.
As Shafia once howled to Yahya, in what they imagined was the privacy of their mini van just days after their household had been almost halved: “Every night I used to think of myself as a cuckold. Every day I used to go and gather (her) from the arms of boys.”

If the question was downright creepy — why on Earth would any father ever feel like a cuckold? — the answer was far worse: Because, of course, that father believed he was the one who had absolute control of his daughters’ sexuality.
As prosecutor Laurie Lacelle told the jurors in her closing address — and here she was talking about the family’s desperate efforts to get Zainab back home after she had run away to a shelter just two months before her death — the family was frantic because “she might be with unapproved males. She might be having sex.”
This was one of the most egregious disconnects of the trial, the difference between the overwhelming evidence that this was a family absolutely obsessed with honour and female chastity and what the Shafias said about it in court.

Both Yahya and Shafia flatly denied ever even hearing about honour killing and said, besides, one could never reclaim it that way anyway, heaven’s no.
As Yahya put it, “This [honour killing] is something I never heard” until “they put this name on our case, which is really shameful for us.”
et honour crimes, a phenomenon spreading across the planet and on the rise just about everywhere, have happened and been publicized in every place this family has ever lived, from their native Afghanistan to Australia and Dubai and, of course, Canada.
Where once such crimes were largely confined to the Middle East and South Asia, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women now gets reports of such crimes from more than 20 countries.
Recent research by the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, which just last month published figures from British police forces obtained through freedom of information requests, showed almost 3,000 honour attacks were recorded by police in the United Kingdom in 2010.

And Pakistan, where the Shafias fled in 1992 and lived for four years, is to honour killing what Las Vegas is to gambling or Mecca to Islam – the holiest shrine.
Every year, between 300 and 1,000 girls and women in Pakistan are punished, usually but not exclusively by their fathers and brothers, for real or perceived crimes against family honour. Just last month, Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission reported that in the first nine months of 2011, 675 women and girls were killed in honour slayings.

These crimes always involve real or imagined breaches of female sexual integrity, and the offences range from being seen with unknown males, being too independent, being raped (which brings shame to the tribe), asking for divorce, dressing provocatively – or even rumours of any of the above.
And in the last two years, 2006 and 2007, that the Shafia clan lived in Dubai before coming to Canada, a local paper, the Gulf News, reported at least two cases of honour crimes, one where two brothers beat up and locked away their 35-year-old sister for staying with a man.
In fact, the day after the jurors retired, Montreal’s La Presse ran a front-page interview columnist Michele Ouimet had with one of Yahya’s sisters, Soraya, in Kabul.
Soraya was “scandalized” by the pictures the reporter showed them, shot of Zainab and Sahar in ordinarily skimpy skirts or bathing and with male friends and boyfriends. She and her husband both cheerfully told Ouimet they believe in killing for honour.

Her husband Habibullah said simply, if his daughters (the couple has seven, plus two boys) dishonoured him, “I would put them in a bag and eliminate them so no one would ever find their traces in Afghanistan.”
But Yahya and Shafia never heard of such killings before?
Their testimony on this point was transparently self-serving and nakedly dishonest: They were lying through their teeth.

But then lying is like breathing to this family.
If it’s a fair generalisation that some Afghans have learned to say whatever they think their listener wants to hear, if it’s true that there is what’s called “permissible lying” in Islam (it’s called al-Taqiyya, and means the concealing or disguising of one’s beliefs, feelings or opinions to save oneself from injury), none of it quite explains the Shafias.
Neither typical Afghans nor typical Muslims, and certainly not devout, they simply have their own unusual if not unique pathology.
The jurors heard how theirs was a house divided: Boys were good, trusted, given freedom; youngsters, even girls so long as they weren’t yet menstruating and thus prone to temptation, were good; pubescent girls and older, not so much.

This may explain Yahya’s copious tears when speaking of her youngest, the little girl who was just eight when all this unfolded: Eight is such a good, safe, innocent, age for a girl.
But for this wee girl, who burst into tears at the funeral and wailed Geeti’s name aloud, the others who survived the family holocaust were the boy, who testified for his father at trial, and the middle sister.
The boy was caught on a wiretap the night before his parents were arrested and after he and his two siblings had been apprehended by child welfare officials. It is evident from what he said on the tapes that at the least, he was playing ball with the story spun by his parents and Hamed – and perhaps even that he knew of the murder plan at minimum after it had been carried out.
A permanent publication ban protects their all names.
By the evidence, with their big brother Hamed, the middle siblings kept a close eye on their more daring sisters.
Hamed once miraculously arrived at the house minutes after Zainab, their parents gone to Dubai, had sneaked her boyfriend in: The suggestion was he’d been following her. The son who testified at trial reportedly encountered Sahar with her boyfriend at a restaurant near their school.
At the very sight of him, the couple sprang apart and he even kissed another girl to deflect suspicion.
Sahar and Geeti once told Nathalie Laramee, their school VP, they were “afraid in the house” and that “we know our behaviour at school is reported back at the home”. They appeared to be referring to both middle sibs, who went to the same school.

And consider what Zainab wrote to Ammar Wahid, the young man she briefly married in the incident which sparked the familial conflagration, in an email before they even met for the first time, she laid out the rules: He was not to approach or acknowledge her publicly; she would come to his locker if she could, and if he saw her brother Hamed anywhere, he should “act like complete stranger”.
In this world, there was no such thing as dating. A girl who liked a boy had to marry him (thus Zainab’s desire to get married was as much about escape as anything else) and only if he was suitable — preferably Afghan, Muslim and from a good family.
The parents’ wealth appears to have shielded them, not from official scrutiny, but from sanction.

Three times the girls’ school, where teachers were alarmed either by Sahar’s profound sadness or Geeti’s increasing wildness, called one or another of Quebec’s child-welfare agencies, the last time in June, just weeks before the family set out on their ostensible vacation.
Each time, the sisters either backed off their original allegations, usually in their parents’ presence (their father could silence them with a glare), or the parents and other children so vigorously denied them, that the files were closed – though in at least one instance, the worker deemed the allegations “founded” or true.
This combination of a perceived need for cultural sensitivity, a family which was so well-off and presentable, and kids so frightened out of their skins they recanted, defeated the child-welfare complaint system.
Consider what Montreal Police Detective Laurie-Ann Lefebvre, who with a partner investigated the 911 call some of the children had a stranger make on their behalf the day Zainab ran away, had to say about Sahar.
Det. Lefebvre was a child-abuse investigator. She interviewed the children, and one of Sahar’s chief complaints was a lack of freedom.
Prosecutor Lacelle asked her, “How did Sahar appear?” and Det. Lefebvre replied, “Well, I was surprised. She said she had no freedom, but she was well-dressed, wore jewelry, had nice makeup. She did not seem depressed.”
And the detective told Sahar that: “I said, ‘no freedom?’. I said, ‘You’re well-dressed, have nice makeup.’”
et that be a lesson for Canadian police, women’s rights activists, social workers and the like: The oppression of girls and women wears different faces, and some of them are beautiful, not battered, and some of them are beautifully made up. Birds in gilded cages are still in cages.
It was the very sort of societal prejudice which ended up leaving the girls even more vulnerable and protecting the Shafia parents and Hamed. If the trio felt entitled and safe to do what they wanted, who could blame them?

Virtually every time Shafia and Yahya encountered Canadian authorities, they bamboozled them.
The family arrived in Canada under Quebec’s “immigrant investor” program – investors put up a chunk of cash interest-free in exchange for permanent residency – and three months later, no questions asked, brought in the other wife, Amir, as a domestic servant on a visitor’s visa.
The parents were called in by school officials a number of times, but Yahya would weep, Shafia would rail furiously, and no action would be taken.
When the school called in child welfare, the same thing would happen: Denials, rage and tears from these affluent parents worked in this country. All their experience with institutional Canada gave them no reason to imagine that a small-city police force wouldn’t be similarly stymied.
It explains the collective arrogance they brought to their crime; they simply imagined they would get away with it.

That it was not a brilliant plan – nor well-executed – actually became part of their defence. Who, Shafia’s lawyer thundered in his closing address, would ever pick such a weird place to commit a murder, take such a chance?

But the truth is, criminality and stupidity are hardly mutually exclusive; rather, the opposite.
It is a delicious irony that it was in some part Shafia’s cheapness – he may be rich but he always kept a wary eye on the pennies — which first raised police suspicions and undermined the family’s original story.
All three – mother, father and Hamed – first claimed that the last they saw of any of the four dead women was shortly after they all got to the Kingston East Motel, when Zainab allegedly came looking for the keys to the Nissan, and then purportedly took the others out for the fatal spin.
But when father and son were checking in, and manager Robert Miller asked how many people there would be in each room, their answers got his attention.

“Six,” said Shafia, clearly not wanting to pay extra for the quartet who would never make it to the motel and would soon be dead in the water.
Hamed then said something to him in Dari, they had a bit of a chat, and Hamed then said, “Nine.” Miller, who of course would remember this forever, suggested they settle on a number.
They did: The receipts, signed by Hamed, show there would be three people per room.

Then there was the matter of the Nissan itself: Shafia, unwilling to see fine cars like the Lexus SUV or the Montana van wasted on four females, picked up the used Nissan for $5,000 the very day before the family left Montreal for Niagara Falls.

No one will ever know for sure how the three girls and Amir drowned – was it in the turning basin at the locks, as police believe (they even checked the drains)? Were they administered a drug which incapacitated them then so quickly disappeared from their bodies toxicological tests couldn’t find it?
What is in no doubt is that all four of them, in the long weeks and months before their deaths, knew they were in danger, that they were afraid, and that their pleas for help were misunderstood or minimized.
At autopsy, Sahar was found to be the only one of the four who didn’t have areas of fresh bruising to the top of her head.
Because of that, right or wrong, I’ve always imagined, in the prosecution theory of how the four were killed, that she was the last to be taken out of the car and drowned. I fear that by the time her killers came for her, she knew very well what was happening: The girl who wanted to be a doctor when she grew up realized she was not going to grow up.
On that June night in a lovely place in one of the freest and luckiest nations in the world, at the hands of those who should have most loved and protected her, she was killed because, well, she was a girl.http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/01/29/jury-reaches-verdict-in-shafia-trial/

[Whisper]

http://i40.tinypic.com/iykf9i.jpg
Mohammad Shafia, center, Tooba Yahya, and Hamed Shafia, left, arrive at the Frontenac County courthouse in Kingston, Ontario, on Sunday.


[...]
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."

But Judge Robert Maranger was unmoved, saying the evidence clearly supported their conviction for "the planned and deliberate murder of four members of your family."


"It is difficult to conceive of a more despicable, more heinous crime ... 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."

Outside court, prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis said the verdict is a reflection of Canadian values that he hopes will resonate.

"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," Laarhuis said to cheers of approval from onlookers.
[...]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46183299/ns/world_news-americas/

[Ninja0980]

It's a cycle that sadly keeps repeating itself. For both the women that are subjected to it and have no escape..and for the men like their brother,who are basically brainwashed from an early age that it's okay to kill your female relatives if they dare to show independence.

[Aslan]

So glad these women finally have justice

[Whisper]

Finally heard today little bits and pieces on tv of that Christie Blatcford columnist
They strongly believe the bruising is from being beaten unconcious
but to keep it where they would be hidden(back of head) I dont think they are smart enough
Hoping more on that will come out and the 1 didnt have that bruising on her head anywhere

[Whisper]

I say appeal away,spend all their money on defense and send them back on the boat broke in 25 years,hope they make them pay for their prison stay too
They have strarted that in some cases/areas
I want them penniless by the time they are deported

Family plans to appeal convictions in 'honor' murders

Kingston, Ontario (CNN) -- Three members of an Afghan immigrant family, who were found guilty of murder in what the judge called "a completely twisted concept of honor," intend to appeal their convictions.
[...]
Sunday's verdicts followed a three-month trial, in which jurors heard wiretaps of Shafia referring to his daughters as "whores" and ranting about their behavior.
[...]
A lawyer for the son, Hamed, told the Canadian Press news agency his client and the client's parents will file an appeal, but he did not say when.

In announcing the verdict, Judge Robert Maranger told the court it was "difficult to conceive of a more despicable, more heinous crime."

"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."

Outside the courtroom, Gerard Laarhuis, the chief prosecutor in the case, called it a "good day for Canadian justice."
At least one Shafia family supporter interrupted Laarhuis with shouts of "lies" and called the verdict a "miscarriage of justice." But others cheered the verdict as Laarhuis continued.
[..]http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/30/world/americas/canada-honor-murder/index.html?hpt=ju_c1

[Rockin Ma]

Graeme Hamilton: Typically immigrants arrive in a new land prepared to make sacrifices for the sake of their children. Mohammad Shafia, a native of Afghanistan, came to Canada in 2007 a wealthy man intent on imprisoning his daughters in an authoritarian household. And when they took steps to break free, a jury found Sunday, he murdered three of them along with his first wife.

A relative of Shafia’s second wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, said in an interview Sunday it quickly became apparent after the Shafia family immigrated to Montreal that the patriarch had no interest in adapting to his new surroundings. (Yahya and the couple’s eldest son, Hamed, were also found guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths.)

Reza Hyderi, Yahya’s first cousin, said the Shafia family was invited to his sister’s wedding in the summer of 2007. It was to be an exciting event for the Shafia children, a chance to meet their cousins, and the girls bought new dresses.

“On the day of the wedding they never showed up, and after, I heard that the father got upset because the girls’ dresses had no sleeves,” Mr. Hyderi said. “He took a pair of scissors and cut up all the clothes. He was so obsessed, so closed-minded.”


The roots of the obsession stretch back to Shafia’s native Afghanistan, where he was born in 1952. After his mother divorced his father and remarried,She had the freedom to do that back then? he did not get past Grade 8 in school, according to Wali Abdali, the brother of Shafia’s first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad.


It is not clear how Shafia amassed his fortune, but he was already rich by the age of 40. The court heard that when he left Afghanistan in 1992, he lost $200,000 in the transfer of $1.5-million worth of “goods” to Pakistan. Mr. Hyderi said he heard that Shafia at one point held a government posting in Kabul and would supplement his income by demanding bribes from the families of prisoners, promising to arrange their release. He said he is skeptical that Shafia could have become a multi-millionaire by selling electronics in war-torn Afghanistan and reselling damaged cars, as he would do later on. “This guy, if it’s so easy for him to kill three of his children, he could do anything,” Mr. Hyderi said.


They spent a year in Australia, but Shafia did not appreciate the local Afghan women’s support group reaching out to his wives, according to Mr. Hyderi. After another stint in Dubai, he decided to make the move to Canada where Yahya had a large extended family. The wealthy Shafia was welcomed under Quebec’s investor immigrant program, and promptly bought a $2-million shopping mall in the suburb of Laval, paying $1.6-million of it in cash.

There was one hitch with the move to Canada. Since polygamy is outlawed, they had to lie about the status of Ms. Mohammad. She initially stayed behind with relatives in France, and Mr. Abdali said he pleaded with her not to go to Canada.

Sahar Shafia, left, Zainab, top, and Geeti
“But she said no, because of the children. She raised those children. She was their true mother,” he said. “She could not bear to be separated from the children, because she knew that if she wasn’t there, the father was a bit strict, a bit cruel.” Mr. Abdali said he tried to keep his nose out of Shafia’s business but one conclusion was unavoidable. “He was not religious as some have said. I never saw him do prayer. But he was a strict man who did not want anyone looking at his wife.” Ms. Mohammed left France and was granted entry to Canada as a cousin of Shafia.

Once in Canada, the climate in the household deteriorated quickly, as Shafia felt his iron grip slipping. Mr. Hyderi, 31, who immigrated to Canada in 2000, said the message was clear that Shafia expected total control over his children. He was insulted to hear that Shafia did not even want his girls mingling with their male cousins: “He said it was male cousins who open the door for female cousins to be prostitutes.” The first time he met Zainab at a family picnic, she was wearing a hijab and he avoided even shaking hands when he was introduced. “Normally I hug my cousins, and kiss them on the cheeks,” he said. Taking a hint, he had little contact with the Shafias, even though they lived nearby.

Ms. Mohammad also found herself under threat. Mr. Abdali said members of Yahya’s family made life miserable for his sister in Montreal, and an effort was underway to send her back to Afghanistan. He told her to go to the police if they tried to have her sent back, but she said she could not. “She was afraid,” he said. “She had threats that if she went to the police, we will kill you.”

Shafia meanwhile was frequently travelling to Asia and the Middle East and making little mark in Montreal. Qais Hamidi, a prominent member of Quebec’s Afghan community, said he knows almost all the Afghans in Montreal, but the first time he saw Shafia was at the funeral for the drowning victims. (At that point, the deaths were being treated as an accident.)

Hasibullah Fazel, an administrator with Maison Afghan-Canadienne, which offer support to new arrivals, said he met Shafia a couple of times but never sensed anything was amiss. “They were a bit reserved, conservative people because they came from Dubai,” he said. Shafia was Muslim but not particularly religious, he said; he even remembers Shafia mocking clerics as insincere.

In the spring of 2009, Mr. Hyderi learned that Zainab was to marry her boyfriend, who was not an Afghan. After talking to Zainab, he could sense the marriage was a desperate move to escape her father’s control. He spoke to Yahya and offered to intervene with Shafia, who was away on business in Dubai, to make Zainab’s life easier.

Yahya insisted that he butt out: “She said, ‘You don’t know Shafia. He’s very mean. He’s very selfish, and I’m afraid he’s going to come home from Dubai, and he’s going to hit her, or he’s going to make Hamed kill her.’ I said, ‘Tooba, what are you talking about. No father would do that.’ ”

The marriage to the boyfriend was annulled after one day, and another plan was hatched for Zainab to marry Mr. Hyderi’s younger brother. But before that could happen, the Shafias set off on a summer road trip. Mr. Hyderi’s father, Latif, who testified for the Crown during the trial, ran into the family at a fruit store as they were preparing to leave. He reported back that he sensed something unusual on meeting Shafia. Shafia had shaken his hand extremely hard and said, “You say women belong to others, but that’s not true.” The younger Mr. Hyderi was alarmed by the cryptic message and spoke to his brother. “I told him to tell Zainab, whatever she did, not to get on a plane. The worst we could think of was he was going to send her back to Dubai.”

He was on vacation with his wife in New York when he got news of the drownings. He knew immediately it was no accident.


The wads of money smoothed Shafia’s entry into Canada, but his heavy cultural baggage proved his downfall. “With almost all immigrants, especially from the Afghan community, it is especially for the future of their children that they come,” Ms. Jahesh remarked. “They want to let them have access to the good education that is in Canada.”

Not Shafia. When Zainab met a boyfriend at school, he forced her to quit school. And when he sensed that he was losing control of his girls, he chose to kill them. One of the last examples of his twisted notion of parenting is found in a wiretapped conversation with Hamed, two weeks after the drownings and before they had been arrested.

“Be I dead or alive, nothing in the world is above your honour,” Shafia said. “Isn’t that right, my son?”
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/01/30/mohammad-shafia-was-so-obsessed-so-closed-minded/

[Whisper]

the best part is they didnt become Canadian Citizens and a MSNBC forum had said "Canadian Family" and I set them straight right away lol

[Whisper]

Hamed Shafia files notice to appeal 1st-degree murder convictions

TORONTO - The lawyer for Hamed Shafia says his client has filed notice to appeal his first-degree murder conviction in the deaths of four family members.

Patrick McCann says Hamed Shafia, 21, has taken the first step by filing an inmate's notice to the Court of Appeal for Ontario.

McCann says the main grounds of the appeal relate to admissibility of what he calls "hearsay evidence" from the victims and of the expert evidence on "honour killing."

He says it will likely be at least a year before the appeal is heard.

Shafia and his parents Mohammad Shafia, 58, and Tooba Yahya, 42, were each found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder on Sunday in Kingston, Ont.
[...]http://www.globaltoronto.com/hamed+shafia+files+notice+to+appeal+1st-degree+murder+convictions/6442570773/story.html

[Whisper]

Kinda long but worth the read,she sums up whole trial in laymans terms and sheds light on certain things we have wondered all along including
At autopsy, Sahar was found to be the only one of the four who didn’t have areas of fresh bruising to the top of her head.

Because of that, right or wrong, I’ve always imagined, in the prosecution theory of how the four were killed, that she was the last to be taken out of the car and drowned. I fear that by the time her killers came for her, she knew very well what was happening: The girl who wanted to be a doctor when she grew up realized she was not going to grow up.
Thast paragraph when I read it gave me gose bumps and I cant kick the image from my mind now her sitting there just spent and knowing it was her turn next
Christie Blatchford: No honour in ‘cold-blooded, shameless’ murder of Shafia girls

KINGSTON, Ont. — It was, as the shy prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis said outside the lovely old Frontenac County courthouse, “a good day for Canadian justice.”

And so it was: Mohammad Shafia, Tooba Mohammad Yahya and Hamed Mohammad Shafia, respectively the Afghan parents and brother of three teenage girls and the woman they loved like a mother, had just been convicted of four counts each of first-degree murder moments earlier.

“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,” Laarhuis said.

The “visitors” reference was a kind and graceful nod to Rona Amir Mohammad, Shafia’s unacknowledged other wife.
Unlike the rest of the sprawling clan, she was brought to Canada as a domestic servant and was on a visitor’s visa, its renewal held over her head like a axe ready to fall by her co-wife Yahya and Shafia.

The three, still crying foul as they were led away to begin serving automatic life sentences for murder, are guilty of wiping out nearly half their family.

“It is difficult to conceive of a more heinous, more despicable and more honourless crime,” Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Maranger said Sunday after the jury foreman had read aloud the verdicts.
Looking directly at Shafia, 58, Yahya, 42, and their oldest son Hamed as they stood before him in the prisoners’ box for the last time, the judge concluded with a stinging denunciation.

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

By using the words “honourless” and “shameless”, Maranger was tossing back at Shafia some of the very epithets he used so often when speaking about his dead daughters.

The mass honour slaying of Zainab, Sahar and Geeti — respectively 19, 17 and 13 — and 52-year-old Mohammad, Shafia’s other, and sadly barren, wife, ranks among the worst in the sordid history of honour crimes.

It was an electric finale for a case that got international attention for the horrific “honour” motive which drove the crime and for a great, rollicking trial which featured shocking wiretapped evidence, galling testimony and even a bomb threat.

At its very heart, as prosecutors argued, were not only the three lost teens and Mohammad, but also the very notion of what is a girl.

As Shafia once howled to Yahya, in what they imagined was the privacy of their minivan just days after their household had been almost halved: “Every night I used to think of myself as a cuckold. Every day I used to go and gather (her) from the arms of boys.”

If the question was downright creepy — why on Earth would any father ever feel like a cuckold? — the answer was far worse: Because, of course, that father believed he was the one who had absolute control of his daughters’ sexuality.

As prosecutor Laurie Lacelle told the jurors in her closing address — and here she was talking about the family’s desperate efforts to get Zainab back home after she had run away to a shelter just two months before her death — the family was frantic because “she might be with unapproved males. She might be having sex.”

This was one of the most egregious disconnects of the trial, the difference between the overwhelming evidence that this was a family absolutely obsessed with honour and female chastity and what the Shafias said about it in court.

Both Yahya and Shafia flatly denied ever even hearing about honour killing and said, besides, one could never reclaim it that way anyway, heaven’s no.

As Yahya put it, “This (honour killing) is something I never heard” until “they put this name on our case, which is really shameful for us.”

Yet honour crimes, a phenomenon spreading across the planet and on the rise just about everywhere, have happened and been publicized in every place this family has ever lived, from their native Afghanistan to Australia and Dubai and, of course, Canada.

Where once such crimes were largely confined to the Middle East and South Asia, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women now gets reports of such crimes from more than 20 countries.

Recent research by the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, which just last month published figures from British police forces obtained through freedom of information requests, showed almost 3,000 honour attacks were recorded by police in the United Kingdom in 2010.

And Pakistan, where the Shafias fled in 1992 and lived for four years, is to honour killing what Las Vegas is to gambling or Mecca to Islam — the holiest shrine.

Every year, between 300 and 1,000 girls and women in Pakistan are punished, usually but not exclusively by their fathers and brothers, for real or perceived crimes against family honour. Just last month, Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission reported that in the first nine months of 2011, 675 women and girls were killed in honour slayings.

These crimes always involve real or imagined breaches of female sexual integrity, and the offences range from being seen with unknown males, being too independent, being raped (which brings shame to the tribe), asking for divorce, dressing provocatively — or even rumours of any of the above.

And in the last two years, 2006 and 2007, that the Shafia clan lived in Dubai before coming to Canada, a local paper, the Gulf News, reported at least two cases of honour crimes, one where two brothers beat up and locked away their 35-year-old sister for staying with a man.

In fact, the day after the jurors retired, Montreal’s La Presse ran a front-page interview columnist Michele Ouimet had with one of Yahya’s sisters, Soraya, in Kabul.

Soraya was “scandalized” by the pictures the reporter showed them, shot of Zainab and Sahar in ordinarily skimpy skirts or bathing and with male friends and boyfriends. She and her husband both cheerfully told Ouimet they believe in killing for honour.

Her husband Habibullah said simply, if his daughters (the couple has seven, plus two boys) dishonoured him, “I would put them in a bag and eliminate them so no one would ever find their traces in Afghanistan.”

But Yahya and Shafia never heard of such killings before?

Their testimony on this point was transparently self-serving and nakedly dishonest: They were lying through their teeth.

But then lying is like breathing to this family.

If it’s a fair generalisation that some Afghans have learned to say whatever they think their listener wants to hear, if it’s true that there is what’s called “permissible lying” in Islam (it’s called al-Taqiyya, and means the concealing or disguising of one’s beliefs, feelings or opinions to save oneself from injury), none of it quite explains the Shafias.

Neither typical Afghans nor typical Muslims, and certainly not devout, they simply have their own unusual if not unique pathology.

The jurors heard how theirs was a house divided: Boys were good, trusted, given freedom; youngsters, even girls so long as they weren’t yet menstruating and thus prone to temptation, were good; pubescent girls and older, not so much.

This may explain Yahya’s copious tears when speaking of her youngest, the little girl who was just eight when all this unfolded: Eight is such a good, safe, innocent, age for a girl.

But for this wee girl, who burst into tears at the funeral and wailed Geeti’s name aloud, the others who survived the family holocaust were the boy, who testified for his father at trial, and the middle sister.

The boy was caught on a wiretap the night before his parents were arrested and after he and his two siblings had been apprehended by child welfare officials. It is evident from what he said on the tapes that at the least, he was playing ball with the story spun by his parents and Hamed — and perhaps even that he knew of the murder plan at minimum after it had been carried out.

A permanent publication ban protects their all names.

By the evidence, with their big brother Hamed, the middle siblings kept a close eye on their more daring sisters.

.
Hamed once miraculously arrived at the house minutes after Zainab, their parents gone to Dubai, had sneaked her boyfriend in: The suggestion was he’d been following her. The son who testified at trial reportedly encountered Sahar with her boyfriend at a restaurant near their school.

At the very sight of him, the couple sprang apart and he even kissed another girl to deflect suspicion.

Sahar and Geeti once told Nathalie Laramee, their school VP, they were “afraid in the house” and that “we know our behaviour at school is reported back at the home”. They appeared to be referring to both middle sibs, who went to the same school.

And consider what Zainab wrote to Ammar Wahid, the young man she briefly married in the incident which sparked the familial conflagration, in an email before they even met for the first time, she laid out the rules: He was not to approach or acknowledge her publicly; she would come to his locker if she could, and if he saw her brother Hamed anywhere, he should “act like complete stranger”.

In this world, there was no such thing as dating. A girl who liked a boy had to marry him (thus Zainab’s desire to get married was as much about escape as anything else) and only if he was suitable — preferably Afghan, Muslim and from a good family.

The parents’ wealth appears to have shielded them, not from official scrutiny, but from sanction.

Three times the girls’ school, where teachers were alarmed either by Sahar’s profound sadness or Geeti’s increasing wildness, called one or another of Quebec’s child-welfare agencies, the last time in June, just weeks before the family set out on their ostensible vacation.

Each time, the sisters either backed off their original allegations, usually in their parents’ presence (their father could silence them with a glare), or the parents and other children so vigorously denied them, that the files were closed — though in at least one instance, the worker deemed the allegations “founded” or true.

This combination of a perceived need for cultural sensitivity, a family which was so well-off and presentable, and kids so frightened out of their skins they recanted, defeated the child-welfare complaint system.

Consider what Montreal Police Detective Laurie-Ann Lefebvre, who with a partner investigated the 911 call some of the children had a stranger make on their behalf the day Zainab ran away, had to say about Sahar.

Det. Lefebvre was a child-abuse investigator. She interviewed the children, and one of Sahar’s chief complaints was a lack of freedom.

Prosecutor Lacelle asked her, “How did Sahar appear?” and Det. Lefebvre replied, “Well, I was surprised. She said she had no freedom, but she was well-dressed, wore jewelry, had nice makeup. She did not seem depressed.”

And the detective told Sahar that: “I said, ‘no freedom?’. I said, ‘You’re well-dressed, have nice makeup.’”

Let that be a lesson for Canadian police, women’s rights activists, social workers and the like: The oppression of girls and women wears different faces, and some of them are beautiful, not battered, and some of them are beautifully made up. Birds in gilded cages are still in cages.

It was the very sort of societal prejudice which ended up leaving the girls even more vulnerable and protecting the Shafia parents and Hamed. If the trio felt entitled and safe to do what they wanted, who could blame them?

Virtually every time Shafia and Yahya encountered Canadian authorities, they bamboozled them.

The family arrived in Canada under Quebec’s “immigrant investor” program — investors put up a chunk of cash interest-free in exchange for permanent residency — and three months later, no questions asked, brought in the other wife, Amir, as a domestic servant on a visitor’s visa.

The parents were called in by school officials a number of times, but Yahya would weep, Shafia would rail furiously, and no action would be taken.

When the school called in child welfare, the same thing would happen: Denials, rage and tears from these affluent parents worked in this country. All their experience with institutional Canada gave them no reason to imagine that a small-city police force wouldn’t be similarly stymied.

It explains the collective arrogance they brought to their crime; they simply imagined they would get away with it.

That it was not a brilliant plan — nor well-executed — actually became part of their defence. Who, Shafia’s lawyer thundered in his closing address, would ever pick such a weird place to commit a murder, take such a chance?

But the truth is, criminality and stupidity are hardly mutually exclusive; rather, the opposite.

It is a delicious irony that it was in some part Shafia’s cheapness — he may be rich but he always kept a wary eye on the pennies — which first raised police suspicions and undermined the family’s original story.

All three — mother, father and Hamed — first claimed that the last they saw of any of the four dead women was shortly after they all got to the Kingston East Motel, when Zainab allegedly came looking for the keys to the Nissan, and then purportedly took the others out for the fatal spin.

But when father and son were checking in, and manager Robert Miller asked how many people there would be in each room, their answers got his attention.

“Six,” said Shafia, clearly not wanting to pay extra for the quartet who would never make it to the motel and would soon be dead in the water.

Hamed then said something to him in Dari, they had a bit of a chat, and Hamed then said, “Nine.” Miller, who of course would remember this forever, suggested they settle on a number.

They did: The receipts, signed by Hamed, show there would be three people per room.

Then there was the matter of the Nissan itself: Shafia, unwilling to see fine cars like the Lexus SUV or the Montana minivan wasted on four females, picked up the used Nissan for $5,000 the very day before the family left Montreal for Niagara Falls.

No one will ever know for sure how the three girls and Amir drowned — was it in the turning basin at the locks, as police believe (they even checked the drains)? Were they administered a drug which incapacitated them then so quickly disappeared from their bodies toxicological tests couldn’t find it?

What is in no doubt is that all four of them, in the long weeks and months before their deaths, knew they were in danger, that they were afraid, and that their pleas for help were misunderstood or minimized.

At autopsy, Sahar was found to be the only one of the four who didn’t have areas of fresh bruising to the top of her head.

Because of that, right or wrong, I’ve always imagined, in the prosecution theory of how the four were killed, that she was the last to be taken out of the car and drowned. I fear that by the time her killers came for her, she knew very well what was happening: The girl who wanted to be a doctor when she grew up realized she was not going to grow up.

On that June night in a lovely place in one of the freest and luckiest nations in the world, at the hands of those who should have most loved and protected her, she was killed because, well, she was a girl.[...]http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/01/29/jury-reaches-verdict-in-shafia-trial/

[VXIII]

But when father and son were checking in, and manager Robert Miller asked how many people there would be in each room, their answers got his attention.

“Six,” said Shafia, clearly not wanting to pay extra for the quartet who would never make it to the motel and would soon be dead in the water.
Hamed then said something to him in Dari, they had a bit of a chat, and Hamed then said, “Nine.” Miller, who of course would remember this forever, suggested they settle on a number.
They did: The receipts, signed by Hamed, show there would be three people per room.


They very well could have been killed as they waited on the freeway for Hamed and Shafia to return this could account for the disrepancy in amount of guests, maybe they were taken one at a time, its over now, they were found guilty as they should be.

[Rockin Ma]

Cuckold is a historically derogatory term for a man who has an unfaithful wife. The word, which has been in recorded use since the 13th century, derives from the cuckoo bird, some varieties of which lay their eggs in other birds' nests. [1]
In modern usage, a cuckold can also mean a male fetishist who gains sexual gratification from his partner having intercourse with other people.

I had to look that up, but it still don't make sense to me.

[Ninja0980]

This is sadly going to be a very hard crime to stop. In many of these cases, they don't even care if they go to prison. They still feel they restored their family's honor.

[Whisper]

big write up in lastnights paper about the sentence was meant to show people coming over here and having probs with their daughters westernizing
Honor killings will not be tolerated and will get a very stiff sentence each time

ill find it later when Im home

[Abroad]

It is a delicious irony that it was in some part Shafia’s cheapness — he may be rich but he always kept a wary eye on the pennies — which first raised police suspicions and undermined the family’s original story.

All three — mother, father and Hamed — first claimed that the last they saw of any of the four dead women was shortly after they all got to the Kingston East Motel, when Zainab allegedly came looking for the keys to the Nissan, and then purportedly took the others out for the fatal spin.

But when father and son were checking in, and manager Robert Miller asked how many people there would be in each room, their answers got his attention.

“Six,” said Shafia, clearly not wanting to pay extra for the quartet who would never make it to the motel and would soon be dead in the water.

Hamed then said something to him in Dari, they had a bit of a chat, and Hamed then said, “Nine.” Miller, who of course would remember this forever, suggested they settle on a number.

They did: The receipts, signed by Hamed, show there would be three people per room.

Then there was the matter of the Nissan itself: Shafia, unwilling to see fine cars like the Lexus SUV or the Montana minivan wasted on four females, picked up the used Nissan for $5,000 the very day before the family left Montreal for Niagara Falls.





I am sure this was partly what made the case. If he had been a bit less concerned about losing his expensive car, or saving money at the hotel there would have been less for the suspicions to settle on.

Very pleased with the outcome.

[Whisper]

I am sure this was partly what made the case. If he had been a bit less concerned about losing his expensive car, or saving money at the hotel there would have been less for the suspicions to settle on.

Very pleased with the outcome.

yeah he bought a cheaper car the day before to me thats premeditation
He does get to keep his properties while in prison
but he will die there ,never live to parole most likely
will most likely lose his properties b/c he will now have no way to make money to be able to pay taxs on that property according to the lawyers in paper lastnight AND I LOVE IT
hes got no family here to run the businesses and hes only had he and Hammer Toe doing all the business in Dubai and so they are predicting he will lose the propertys all over the place

[Abroad]

This is sadly going to be a very hard crime to stop.

In Denmark they were "letting" minors do the killing, secure in the knowledge that we would not lock them up and throw away the key.


Then a couple of years ago they succesfully prosecuted a conspiracy to murder charge, which punished quite a large number of the people who were involved in a so-called "honour-killing", from the aunt who pretended to be on the side of the young couple that was eloping and set them up to the father of the child that was the designated shooter, down to and including the guy who drove the father and the child to the scene. It was a huge effort and a glorious success, and I hope other families with murder in mind took note.

[Tundratot]

Middle Eastern men/families who think that honor killing is justified and whom prison will not deter are probably operating under the belief that things will be similar to their country of origin. These countries will imprison honor killers, but not for very long. They are barely in the door when they get out again.
One-third of the reported homicides in Jordan are honor killings. The killers are treated with leniency, and families assign the task of honor killing to a minor, because under Jordanian juvenile law, minors who commit crimes are sentenced to a juvenile center where they can learn a profession and continue their education, and then, at eighteen, be released without a criminal record. The average term served for an honor killing is only seven and a half months.http://www.pbs.org/speaktruthtopower/rana.html

The Palestinian Authority, using a clause in the Jordanian penal code still in effect in the West Bank, exempts men from punishment for killing a female relative if she has brought dishonor to the family.[69] Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, promised to change the discriminatory law, but no action has been taken.
Actions of Pakistani police officers and judge have, in the past, seemed to support the act of honor killings in the name of family honor. Police enforcement, in situations of admitted murder, do not always take action against the perpetrator. Also, judges in Pakistan, rather than ruling cases with gender equality in mind, also seem to reinforce inequality and in some cases sanction the murder of women considered dishonorable. [121] Often, a suspected honor killing never even reaches court, but in cases where they do, the alleged killer is often not charged or is given a reduced sentence of three to four years in jail. In a case study of 150 honor killings, the proceeding judges rejected only eight of claims that the women were killed for honor. The rest were sentenced lightly.[122] In many cases in Pakistan, one of the reasons honor killing cases never make it to the courts, is because, according to some lawyers and women’s right activists, Pakistani law enforcement do not get involved. Under the encouragement of the killer, police often declare the killing as a domestic case that warrants no involvement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing

As I was reading on this, one particularly disturbing point made was that honor killings are treated in much the same way as westernized countries treat "crimes of passion". That brings it back home rather forcefully. Years ago, there was a judge in Maryland that gave a husband who killed his wife a miniscule 18 month sentence. Kenneth Peacock caught his wife in flagrant delicto and killed her later that day with the second shot he fired from a single-shot rifle. (http://www.now.org/nnt/01-95/cahill.html) The judge sympathized with the man and called him a non-criminal. The point being that our own social mores and justice systems are not too far removed from the same moral space these Middle Eastern folks are inhabiting and I find that frightening.

[Abroad]

"The second shot [...] from a single-shot rifle"? "Later that day"? :stupido3:




Doesn't sound particularly impulsive to me...... I thought to claim "crime of passion"-defense one had to act immediately in a red haze of fury, using whatever happened to be to hand at the time, be it kitchen knife or alarm clock or one's bare hands? OK, so he might have had a rifle on him if he was returning from a hunting trip, but he had to re-load it, and "later in the day" just pours cold water all over it to my mind. Do we know how much "later" it was?

[Tundratot]

"The second shot [...] from a single-shot rifle"? "Later that day"? :stupido3:Oh, yes. You can go to the link I provided to read the story, but I'll give you the cliff notes. This man drove the male lover away with his gun. He then engaged in an argument with his wife over some hours. He fired a shot which went over her head. He reloaded, and fired another shot which killed her. It wasn't even the first time he'd caught her with a lover, nor the first time he'd held a gun on her.

[Abroad]

Jeez.....

Went to the link.


Kenneth Peacock arrived home on Feb. 9 and found his wife Sandra in bed with another man. Police say Peacock drove the man out at gunpoint, then spent several hours drinking and arguing with his wife before shooting her in the head with his hunting rifle. The fatal wound was actually the second shot fired at Sandra Peacock that night. Kenneth Peacock had to stop and reload his single-shot rifle when the first shot hit the wall above her head.

As far as I am concerned, any claim he had on "crime of passion" as a defense goes out of the window with what I have bolded.......


During the sentencing hearing, Judge Cahill said he couldn't imagine a situation that would provoke "an uncontrollable rage greater than this . . . for someone who is happily married to be betrayed in your personal life, when you're out working to support the spouse. (emphasis added)

And yet he controlled it for several hours, - and according to what you are saying (it not being the first time he had caught her cheating on him) I would question the "happily married/feeling of betrayal" meme, too. He knew what their marriage was and who she was. He killed her from some warped sense that he had a right to do so.

[Whisper]

'Honour'-based violence runs deep and wide
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/01/honour-based-violence-deep-wide


Murderer, 21, appeals 'honour' killings case
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Murderer+appeals+honour+killings+case/6083444/story.html

There is no honour in cheapening tolerance in Islam
http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/there-is-no-honour-in-cheapening-tolerance-in-islam

[Whisper]

http://i40.tinypic.com/2lijy4w.jpg
Hamed Shafia was convicted in the deaths of his three sisters and his father's first wife.
http://www.thestar.com/article/1123947--dimanno-mohammad-shafia-destroyed-more-than-three-children

[Whisper]

Shafia wife killed because she was despised by husband, second wife

She once overheard one of the murderers refer to her as “that other one,” the honour killings trial was told – as though she were a piece of unwanted baggage.

And in a sense she was.

The portrait of Rona Amir Mohammad, long-suffering first wife of the Afghan-born killer Mohammad Shafia, that emerged from the evidence presented by trial prosecutors and from her diaries, a court exhibit, was of a tolerant, liberally inclined stepmother who cared passionately about the family's children.
While Rona was unable to have children herself, she helped raise the Shafia children,” prosecutor Laurie Lacelle told the trial in her opening address. “She loved them all.”

She was drowned in her early 50s at the Kingston Mills locks along with three teen-aged Shafia sisters.

At the murder trial, Ms. Mohammad's younger sister, Diba Masoomi, who lives in France, recounted that Ms. Mohammad told her during phone calls that the other adults in the family had ostracized her.

But this had to be kept secret, she testified, because “the family honour would be in danger, and her own life would have been in danger.”
[...]http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/shafias-first-wife-killed-because-she-was-despised-by-husband-second-wife/article2323378/?from=sec431

[Ninja0980]

In a sad way,Tundratot is right about how crimes of passion are viewed in the same way honor killings are in many cases. I remember the Clara Harris case in Texas where some people actually wanted the charges against her dropped. Being a cheater doesn't mean you deserve to get murdered or that the perp should get a slap on the wrist. However in many cases the perps do get sympathy while the victims are put on trial.
That's the same thing with honor killings. The perps get sympathy in many of these countries while the victims are seen as deserving of their deaths. That is very hard to deter. But hopefully with cases like this, it will send a message. This isn't the Middle East where the justice system will give you a slap on the wrist. You commit murder, you will spend a long time in prison.

[Whisper]

Shafia father files appeal, mother to file later

Mohammad Shafia, the father convicted of killing his three teenage daughters and first wife in a polygamous marriage, has filed an appeal, according to a media report.

Shafia filed an inmate notice of appeal, according to CTV, based upon similar grounds as his son, Hamed, who was convicted in the murders.
Hamed filed his appeal on Monday.
When contacted by Postmedia News, Shafia's lawyer, Peter Kent, declined to comment.

Shafia's second wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, who was convicted of first-degree in the case will also file an appeal. A representative from the law office of David Crowe, who defended Yahya, said an appeal will be filed at a future date but declined to comment further.
[...]http://www.canada.com/news/Shafia+father+files+appeal+mother+file+later/6099200/story.html

[redsaid]

I really hate this story. A whole family wiped out in "honor"?!? In this case there is no honor in death.

[Whisper]

Maclean's releases first multimedia e-book ‎on Shafia family murder trial

TORONTO - It’s a case that captured headlines nationwide and made Muslim leaders across Canada denounce so-called honour killings, domestic violence and misogyny.

Now, coverage of the Shafia family murder trial is available as a multimedia e-book—the first of its kind in Canada.

During the duration of the trial, Maclean’s reporter Michael Friscolanti lived in a Kingston, Ont., hotel room for three months. The Shafia Honour Killing Trial allows readers to immerse themselves in the trial itself and includes documents, video and audio evidence from the courtroom.

Sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and 13-year-old Geeti Shafia, were discovered with their polygamist father's first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, in the car in Montreal’s Rideau Canal in June 2009.

Last month, a jury found the girls' father, Mohammad Shafia, his second wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya and their son Hamed Mohammad Shafia guilty of four counts of first-degree murder with no chance of parole for 25 years.

The full e-book is available for purchase as an iPad app or can be downloaded as a PDF document.

[...]

http://www.globalnews.ca/canada/feature/6442576329/story.html


A downloadable PDF sample chapter can be seen at bottom of the link

[Whisper]

Post ebook No. 6: Killed Because They Were Girls
The Complete Coverage of the Shafia Trial
By Christie Blatchford and the National Post


On the night of June 30, 2009, a father, mother and brother drowned half their family in a black Nissan just outside of Kingston, Ont.

On Jan. 29, 2012, Mohammad Shafia, Tooba Mohammad Yahya and Hamed Mohammad Shafia were each convicted of four counts of first-degree murder.

The apparent motive behind the killings was what the judge ultimately described as “a notion of honour that is founded in the domination and control of women, a sick notion of honour that has absolutely no place in any civilized society.” Christie Blatchford and the reporters and columnists of the National Post covered the so-called honour killings from the first reports of a submerged car to the final verdict. With her clear analysis and astute emotional observation, Blatchford provides the definitive account of a crime that appalled a nation.http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/08/post-ebook-no-6-killed-because-they-were-girls/


http://i41.tinypic.com/1252654.jpg



out of the books coming out I would recommend this one
shes one of my all time fave journalists
I read her column each night at work and right now shes keeping up on this bear of a man everyone loved in Toronto that was shot and killed b/c he wanted to do the right thing

[Whisper]

Moms the last one to file her appeal or intent to file
Tooba Mohammad Yahya files intent to appeal murder convictions in Shafia case

The mother of the Shafia family has joined her husband and son in filing her intention to appeal her convictions on four counts of first-degree murder.

Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42, her husband Mohammad Shafia, 58, and their son Hamed, 21, have now each filed an inmate notice of appeal, which is the first step toward filing a full appeal at a later date.

The three were convicted Jan. 29 of killing daughters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, and the first wife in the polygamous marriage, Rona Amir Mohammad, 52.

The bodies were found June 30, 2009, in a car at the bottom of a canal in Kingston, Ont.

The judge described the killings as being motivated by the Shafias’ “twisted concept of honour.”
[...]http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1128221--tooba-mohammad-yahya-files-intent-to-appeal-murder-convictions-in-shafia-case?bn=1

[VXIII]

Whisper " You made me think of something in comment 300

No one will ever know for sure how the three girls and Amir drowned – was it in the turning basin at the locks, as police believe (they even checked the drains)? Were they administered a drug which incapacitated them then so quickly disappeared from their bodies toxicological tests couldn’t find it?

Shafia has just come back from Afganistan, could he have brought some exotic type afghani type plant or drug we dont have tests for? Didnt Stoopa mention the girls were sleeping in the car while waiting for Shafia and Hamhead to find a hotel room?

[Whisper]

Whisper " You made me think of something in comment 300


Shafia has just come back from Afganistan, could he have brought some exotic type afghani type plant or drug we dont have tests for? Didnt Stoopa mention the girls were sleeping in the car while waiting for Shafia and Hamhead to find a hotel room?

couldve but customs here is extremely hard to get anything through but not saying they couldnt

[VXIII]

could have been disguised as some type of food or seasoning...

[Whisper]

could have been disguised as some type of food or seasoning...

Couldve been,whatever they did will be secret between the 3 of them until someone talks in prison and it seems like they always do

[Whisper]

Couldve been,whatever they did will be secret between the 3 of them until someone talks in prison and it seems like they always do

I personally see them zeroing in on the son Hammer Head ,hes the youngest with the most to lose out of his life,
I can see them trying to strike a deal just to have to truth be known
I would love to know what they did to incapacitate them
I still believe in my heart they were drowned in bathroom of motel
I just cant believe theres no test to check water in lungs to see if its chlorinated or not
Theres got to be something
If they can take my blood and tell me I am related to King Henry and Brooke Shields you cant tell me theres nothing to say what water was in their lungs
And Im not related to them lol Im just giving an example from a PBS show I watch called History Detectives

[carolinablue]

:congrats::congrats::congrats::congrats::congrats: Whisper should have a sparkly crown to wear as thanks for the work she's done on this story! TY for keeping us in the loop, for all the research and reading you did to give us these updates. your posts are always well written, full of info and victim-centered. All Hail Whisper!:star:

[Whisper]

:congrats::congrats::congrats::congrats::congrats: Whisper should have a sparkly crown to wear as thanks for the work she's done on this story! TY for keeping us in the loop, for all the research and reading you did to give us these updates. your posts are always well written, full of info and victim-centered. All Hail Whisper!:star:

ty carolinablue but this turned personal for me with it being so close to where I live(less then 300 miles)
At the beginning I was thinking this was 1300 miles away and then found out it was alot closer to me
I have a million questions still though not answered at trial
thats why Im getting Blatchfords book b/c she has so much info not published in any of the papers
she was there day in and day out and its because of her the money raised to have a marker for a memorial at the site is going to happen
She admits she became obsessed that these 4 girls/women were murdered and wanted justice and for them to not be forgotten

[VXIII]

:top: :flowers:
:congrats::congrats::congrats::congrats::congrats: Whisper should have a sparkly crown to wear as thanks for the work she's done on this story! TY for keeping us in the loop, for all the research and reading you did to give us these updates. your posts are always well written, full of info and victim-centered. All Hail Whisper!:star:

I am sending you claps and bravos as well, excellent work... :flowers::dancing2::flowers:

I know it was mentioned in one of the articles there was a lot of information the jury did not get to hear about, they probobly did test the water and know the answer but the defense was able to get it suppressed so the jury couldnt hear about it. I dont think holding back evidence is fair, just like I dont thinK any of us can truly be tried by a "jury of our peers" Thanks Whisp, we love you... :flowers:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g411/V_XIII/crown.jpg

[sheevaa]

Concerning the water in the lungs. I know they were likely dead by the time they got to the locks, but they went into the water. Even without breathing, wouldn't water fill their bodies anyway? Maybe that's the reason they can't determine where the water came from since it would all show from the locks?

Granted, I have no idea how any of that works...just my thoughts on what might have happened.

[Whisper]

Concerning the water in the lungs. I know they were likely dead by the time they got to the locks, but they went into the water. Even without breathing, wouldn't water fill their bodies anyway? Maybe that's the reason they can't determine where the water came from since it would all show from the locks?

Granted, I have no idea how any of that works...just my thoughts on what might have happened.

with drowning as the cause of death whatever water they drowned in would be the only water in the lungs b/c they dont operate after death
Wouldnt have expanded again to take in any other water
And just knowing how ruthless they were believe me they made sure they were good and dead
Im hoping the book will answer some questions

[Whisper]

funny when you posted that about the drowning
my mom calls me and is telling me shes watching the fifth estate and its all about this man and his 2nd wife and son drowned their 3 daughters and his first wife
LOL she has alzheimers and she will tell me the whole story again in a couple days when she sees it on tv
her nurse came on laughing

[VXIII]

Maybe one of the members that are Drs, like Band T would know answer????ok

[sheevaa]

I swear this is hitting me just like Baby P's case did. It just bubbles up, for god sake, WHY? That 3 (or more) people corroborated in murdering 4 people from your own FAMILY. I just can't even my head around it. Yeah, culture gaps and all that...but in my opinion you have to be pretty twisted to murder one person in cold blood, nevermind four. Three being your children.

The appeals and lying and all their fucking bullshit is just making me sick. You all did something horrific, take your consequences like decent people would. Fuckers.

Phew...k, feel a lil better now. Sorry for the rant:P

[malq]

I hope this man is comfortable with the fact that the Qu'ran states any man who kills his children will burn for all eternity in hell.

How is it that any man who kills his children will burn in hell, but it is perfectly fine to send them on suicide missions and blow up as many people as they can? I will tell you why. The Koran justifies it by making it a holy mission for Muslim families to relish in martyrdom. As long as you are pleasing Allah by killing infidels you get a pass on any other morals.

[carolinablue]

malq, I used to wonder the same until I did some reading and listening. The verses you refer to are called "The Verses of the Sword"; they present a persuasive argument for jihad against infidels...BUT! Those verses were not written by Mohammed; they were written by a mullah who probably would have gotten along well with Fred Phelps. True Islam, the teachings of Mohammed, has three paramount laws: Abstain from violence. Treat every man as your brother. Honor and protect women, children and the helpless.

We see all the violence and hate and are led to believe that all Muslims hate all non-Muslims, but that's not rue. Fred Phelps and other so-called Christian hate groups are not representative of Christians, but they get a hell of a lot of press coverage. The Methodist minister in town has set up a ministry for the families of moms and/or dads in prison. Church members provide money, food, clothing, toys, school clothes and supplies to the families on an ongoing basis. They also provide transportation when needed and will even drive them up to the facilities to visit. He's been doing this for over 30 years and his name and his (and our) work has never been mentioned in any paper. The dogs making the most noise are the ones you hear, but there are so many more just going about their business quietly.

I used to get all bent out of shape and want to know why true Muslims weren't standing up and raising hell over this perversion of a gentle, inclusive faith...until one of my cousins gently explained that while an individual might be willing to sacrifice his life for principle, he would not want his wife, children, parents and family and friends to die with him. Apparently jihadists don't play, if you aren't with them, you're the enemy.

[Whisper]

I swear this is hitting me just like Baby P's case did. It just bubbles up, for god sake, WHY? That 3 (or more) people corroborated in murdering 4 people from your own FAMILY. I just can't even my head around it. Yeah, culture gaps and all that...but in my opinion you have to be pretty twisted to murder one person in cold blood, nevermind four. Three being your children.

The appeals and lying and all their fucking bullshit is just making me sick. You all did something horrific, take your consequences like decent people would. Fuckers.

Phew...k, feel a lil better now. Sorry for the rant:P

I honestly think b/c stuff never happens here like this is why its hitting everyone so hard here
Im not saying nothing bad happens here Im just saying very rarely anything like this

[HijabiGirl]

How is it that any man who kills his children will burn in hell, but it is perfectly fine to send them on suicide missions and blow up as many people as they can? I will tell you why. The Koran justifies it by making it a holy mission for Muslim families to relish in martyrdom. As long as you are pleasing Allah by killing infidels you get a pass on any other morals.

Suicide is forbidden in Islam, yo. You've made it no secret how much you hate Islam and have zero desire to actually learn the true tenets of the religion. And you may want to research the actual meaning of the word Jihad rather than let the media (FauxNews) define the term for you.

[biteme]

Suicide is forbidden in Islam, yo. You've made it no secret how much you hate Islam and have zero desire to actually learn the true tenets of the religion. And you may want to research the actual meaning of the word Jihad rather than let the media (FauxNews) define the term for you.
If not the religion must be the culture, but the culture is the religion?
Which came first the the religion or culture, did the killing or lying come first seems to be a lot of both in that culture/religion

[HijabiGirl]

If not the religion must be the culture, but the culture is the religion?
Which came first the the religion or culture, did the killing or lying come first seems to be a lot of both in that culture/religion

Using this reasoning that would mean you and I are both lying, evil, murdering bastards. I mean, our culture here in the West isn't exactly known for honest politicians and being peaceful folks. Lying and murder is the sole responsibility of the individual committing the crime/deceit. Trying to blame it on their culture or religion is saying an individual is not responsible for his/her own actions. Killing and lying is universal across all cultures and religions (atheists are no exception). So how about we blame this man's (and companions) evil actions on them being assholes. Pure and simple.

[biteme]

Using this reasoning that would mean you and I are both lying, evil, murdering bastards. I mean, our culture here in the West isn't exactly known for honest politicians and being peaceful folks. Lying and murder is the sole responsibility of the individual committing the crime/deceit. Trying to blame it on their culture or religion is saying an individual is not responsible for his/her own actions. Killing and lying is universal across all cultures and religions (atheists are no exception). So how about we blame this man's (and companions) evil actions on them being assholes. Pure and simple.
All religions have always been BAD! EVEL! If there is a hell at least 50% of all religious leaders are there. I just feel some religions have gotten more or less over the killing part and I don't feel Muslims have, I feel the religion is a century behind most other religions and the times
Muslim leaders still use religion to hold the population in check

[malq]

Suicide is forbidden in Islam, yo. You've made it no secret how much you hate Islam and have zero desire to actually learn the true tenets of the religion. And you may want to research the actual meaning of the word Jihad rather than let the media (FauxNews) define the term for you.

Typical response, I do not hate Islam. I hate the way it is interpreted. I hate the fact Islam has have a war with anyone who does not agree with them. The Koran even states they must kill the infidels. Why are you ignoring the fact that families are sending their kids on suicide missions? It is well known they will die for Allah. September 11 in the name of Islam, that's what I hate. Our country is on super top alert and completely changed because of Islam. We hate that shit. Homeland security is not adequately protecting us from extremist attack, It will happen again, We hate that shit.
I can spend a lifetime studying the true meaning of Islam, the fact is, they justify blowing up people and themselves up in the name of Allah and Islam. I could care less how you want to paint JIHAD, it still spells danger and is a threat to the United states.

[malq]

Using this reasoning that would mean you and I are both lying, evil, murdering bastards. I mean, our culture here in the West isn't exactly known for honest politicians and being peaceful folks. Lying and murder is the sole responsibility of the individual committing the crime/deceit. Trying to blame it on their culture or religion is saying an individual is not responsible for his/her own actions. Killing and lying is universal across all cultures and religions (atheists are no exception). So how about we blame this man's (and companions) evil actions on them being assholes. Pure and simple.

I would buy what you are saying if I saw any kind on reaction from the worldwide Muslim community. They won't say they condone the radical extremists, but there is no outcry or call to stop it from anywhere. The amount of Muslims in the world should be enough to over-ride "a few crazy folk". The lack of outcry from the worldwide Muslim community speak volumes.

Our politicians are as crooked as they come, however there is very public outcries to the point of demonstration.
Where are the Muslim leaders or people en- mass saying we must stop this now?

[HijabiGirl]

I would buy what you are saying if I saw any kind on reaction from the worldwide Muslim community. They won't say they condone the radical extremists, but there is no outcry or call to stop it from anywhere. The amount of Muslims in the world should be enough to over-ride "a few crazy folk". The lack of outcry from the worldwide Muslim community speak volumes.

Our politicians are as crooked as they come, however there is very public outcries to the point of demonstration.
Where are the Muslim leaders or people en- mass saying we must stop this now?

This tells me you have done absolutely no research in the religion, at least not any further than sources such as Faux News. There have been numerous fatwas issued by multiples sheiks denouncing the actions of the terrorists on 9/11. It has been spoken and preached abundantly (in mosques) that people that committed those horrible acts are condemned to hell. Why haven't you seen it? Because it is not controversial and doesn't paint over a billion people with one brush. The media isn't interested in showing the humans that call themselves Muslim, only the monsters. The lack or representation in the Western media speaks to me louder than the so-called silence you perceive from the religious leaders of Islam.

The Qur'an cannot be read as a piece meal but must be read in context. The verses stating to kill the infidels were specifically addressing people who were waging war against Muslims in their own territory over 1400 years ago. It is not carte blanche to attack anyone who is not Muslim. Where is the outcry for over a million Iraqis dead over a false war built on lies? Seems many more people lost their lives over greed and oil (and continue to die) than some dumb asses who twist religion to fit their needs. Or do men, women and children who aren't white, rich and Christian count as "people" to you?

[Whisper]

Join us Friday at 12 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT for a live chat with Christie Blatchford

On the night of June 30, 2009, a father, mother and brother drowned half their family in a black Nissan just outside of Kingston, Ont. On Jan. 29, 2012, Mohammad Shafia, Tooba Mohammad Yahya and Hamed Mohammad Shafia were each convicted of four counts of first-degree murder. The National Post‘s Christie Blatchford has been covering the story from the beginning,
[...]
Christie Blatchford will join us tomorrow (Friday) at noon Eastern/9 a.m. Pacific to take all your questions on the Shafia case, right here on Full Comment. Pose your questions to Ms. Blatchford by sending us an email, or leaving a comment below, and be sure to join us tomorrow for all the answers.http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/02/16/join-us-friday-at-noon-eastern9-pacific-for-a-live-chat-with-christie-blatchford/

[Pete Bondurant]

This tells me you have done absolutely no research in the religion, at least not any further than sources such as Faux News. There have been numerous fatwas issued by multiples sheiks denouncing the actions of the terrorists on 9/11. It has been spoken and preached abundantly (in mosques) that people that committed those horrible acts are condemned to hell.

Those bastards say one thing when speaking English to the representatives of Western media outlets...but they sing an entirely different tune when speaking Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Pashtu etc..... The charities of these same sheiks and imams contribute generously to various organisations that have committed violent acts against innocent civilians...most of whom are Muslims themselves. I know these things because I have a colleague who is a fluent Arabic speaking Christian. What is happening to Christians in Egypt now? In Syria? In Iraq? This is the story the western media ignores. They have gone out of their way to defend Muslims or avoid upsetting them. Islamophobia? There is plenty of reason for it.

[Ninja0980]

Here's the only difference between Islamic and Christian extremists right now...the Islamic ones are to able to pull off acts like honor killings and other groups like gays and lesbians while the Christian ones really want to but know they can't get away with it here.
I have relatives and friends who are gay and lesbian...and trust me..some of the "Family Values" groups have made it plain as day that they would like nothing more to export,jail or kill them. The stuff that has come out of their mouths since gay marriage was passed in NY and the stuff since then sickens and chills me all at once.
That philosphy also goes towards people who don't follow their narrow minded view of the bible. And if you look throughout history,you'll find that hundreds of thousands of innocent people were murdered by Christians who had no problem using the Bible to justify it.
There are most certainly problems with Islam but please don't tell me that Christian extremists are any better. As I said before, the only difference is one group is given more leeway in carrying out acts of murder.

[malq]

This tells me you have done absolutely no research in the religion, at least not any further than sources such as Faux News. There have been numerous fatwas issued by multiples sheiks denouncing the actions of the terrorists on 9/11. It has been spoken and preached abundantly (in mosques) that people that committed those horrible acts are condemned to hell. Why haven't you seen it? Because it is not controversial and doesn't paint over a billion people with one brush. The media isn't interested in showing the humans that call themselves Muslim, only the monsters. The lack or representation in the Western media speaks to me louder than the so-called silence you perceive from the religious leaders of Islam.

The Qur'an cannot be read as a piece meal but must be read in context. The verses stating to kill the infidels were specifically addressing people who were waging war against Muslims in their own territory over 1400 years ago. It is not carte blanche to attack anyone who is not Muslim. Where is the outcry for over a million Iraqis dead over a false war built on lies? Seems many more people lost their lives over greed and oil (and continue to die) than some dumb asses who twist religion to fit their needs. Or do men, women and children who aren't white, rich and Christian count as "people" to you?


I think your Burka is too tight. I don't have to study anything about Islam to analyze the results.


With all the 2.2 billion Muslims in the world, if they did not approve of what these extremists are doing they would have had their heads off a long time ago. They have no problem abducting infidel reporters in a heartbeat, off their heads and posting it on Youtube. Fact is, they are well funded and supported by the Muslim faith with no attempt to curb it. We have good reason to fear Islam and you know it.
Modern Christians can be idiots but they don't have dangerous mindsets en-mass and perform horrific acts of violence, save for rare, highly condemned incidents.

Tell all Muslims to read the Koran in context, not me. They are the ones threatening the world with no resistance. In fact there is pressure in the west to embrace it in the name of tolerance. That's where I lose mine.

If you care to show me credible evidence the 2.2 billion Muslims are doing anything to aggressively curb this crap I will listen. I don't take whispering in a mosque as credible.
Show me any credible evidence there has been retaliation or condemnation of The attack on the united States on 9/11. I have not heard a single we are sorry, we will find who did this and stop it! from any Muslim leader. I have not heard a public apology for any of this horseshit. Obviously, the masses back them.

Like it or not it is all stemming from the Koran. I may not know every verse, but I have read the English version.
Frankly I find it boring with every other sentence saying praise Allah. The part where it says it is a Muslims duty to kill the infidels by hand, by fist, or by sword scares me. I can't wait for the men with the white flags on black horses to come over the hill and slaughter little ol' infidel me. There are more than a few weirdos or sects who take that literally. That is painfully obvious and I don't see the Muslim community doing anything to change that. Clearly a high percentage of the 26% of the people in the world(2.2 million muslims) are extremely dangerous.

ETA: I was incorrect about the 2.2 billion Muslims and 26% of the population. It is half that. Those figures
are what the Muslim population will swell to by 2030. My apologies.

[biteme]

It's not a few radicals like you find in other religions, or as some try to make you believe
It's a whole country of religious nut cases, and very few rational people that keep their mouth shut for fear their whole family will be killed

Yeah real rational bunch those Muslims, just a few billion bad apples ruining the reputation of the decent few

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy
Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
This led to Islamic protests across the Muslim world, some of which escalated into violence with instances of firing on crowds of protestors resulting in a total of more than 100 reported deaths,[1] including the bombing of the Danish embassy in Pakistan and setting fire to the Danish Embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran, storming European buildings, and burning the Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, French and German flags in Gaza City.[2][3] Various groups, primarily in the Western world, responded by endorsing the Danish policies, including "Buy Danish" campaigns and other displays of support. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen described the controversy as Denmark's worst international crisis since World War II.[4]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/apr/22/south-park-censored-fatwa-muhammad
South Park censored after threat of fatwa over Muhammad episode

http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=168203
COPENHAGEN – Kurt Westergaard, who has been facing death threats for four years over his cartoon of the prophet Muhammad, is trying to settle back into his home – a month after an ax attack in his living room.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/21/us-afghanistan-korans-idUSTRE81K09T20120221
Reuters) - About 2,000 Afghans protested outside the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan on Tuesday over a report that foreign soldiers improperly disposed of copies of the Koran.

U.S. helicopters fired flares to try to break up as many as 2,000 demonstrators who massed outside several gates to the base, chanting anti-foreigner slogans and throwing stones.

Protests raged for three days across Afghanistan in April last year after a U.S. pastor burned a Koran in Florida.

Eleven people were killed when demonstrators stormed a U.N. compound in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, including seven foreign U.N. workers. Another riot in the southern city of Kandahar left nine dead and more than 80 wounded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dove_World_Quran-burning_controversy
The Dove World Quran-burning controversy arose in July 2010, when Terry Jones, the pastor of the Christian Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, U.S., announced he would burn 200 Qurans on the 2010 anniversary of the September 11 attacks. He gained media coverage, resulting in international outrage over his plans and pleas from world leaders to cancel the event. In early September 2010, Jones cancelled and pledged never to burn a Quran.[1] Jones's threat sparked protests in the Middle East and Asia, in which a total of 20 people were killed.
Jones held a "trial of the Quran" on March 20, 2011 in his Gainesville church. Finding the scriptures guilty of "crimes against humanity," he burned it in the church sanctuary.[2] Protesters in the northern Afghanistan city of Mazar-i-Sharif and elsewhere attacked the United Nations Assistance Mission, killing at least 30 people, including at least seven U.N. workers, and injuring at least 150 people.[3][4][5] Jones disclaimed any responsibility. Norwegian, Swedish, Nepalese and Romanian nationals were among the UN workers killed.[6]
American news analysts criticized and blamed Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, for drawing attention to the Quran burning.[7] On March 31, Karzai publicly denounced the burning and asked for Terry Jones's arrest.[8]

[HijabiGirl]

It's not a few radicals like you find in other religions, or as some try to make you believe
It's a whole country of religious nut cases, and very few rational people that keep their mouth shut for fear their whole family will be killed

Yeah real rational bunch those Muslims, just a few billion bad apples ruining the reputation of the decent few

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy
Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
This led to Islamic protests across the Muslim world, some of which escalated into violence with instances of firing on crowds of protestors resulting in a total of more than 100 reported deaths,[1] including the bombing of the Danish embassy in Pakistan and setting fire to the Danish Embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran, storming European buildings, and burning the Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, French and German flags in Gaza City.[2][3] Various groups, primarily in the Western world, responded by endorsing the Danish policies, including "Buy Danish" campaigns and other displays of support. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen described the controversy as Denmark's worst international crisis since World War II.[4]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/apr/22/south-park-censored-fatwa-muhammad
South Park censored after threat of fatwa over Muhammad episode

http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=168203
COPENHAGEN – Kurt Westergaard, who has been facing death threats for four years over his cartoon of the prophet Muhammad, is trying to settle back into his home – a month after an ax attack in his living room.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/21/us-afghanistan-korans-idUSTRE81K09T20120221
Reuters) - About 2,000 Afghans protested outside the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan on Tuesday over a report that foreign soldiers improperly disposed of copies of the Koran.

U.S. helicopters fired flares to try to break up as many as 2,000 demonstrators who massed outside several gates to the base, chanting anti-foreigner slogans and throwing stones.

Protests raged for three days across Afghanistan in April last year after a U.S. pastor burned a Koran in Florida.

Eleven people were killed when demonstrators stormed a U.N. compound in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, including seven foreign U.N. workers. Another riot in the southern city of Kandahar left nine dead and more than 80 wounded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dove_World_Quran-burning_controversy
The Dove World Quran-burning controversy arose in July 2010, when Terry Jones, the pastor of the Christian Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, U.S., announced he would burn 200 Qurans on the 2010 anniversary of the September 11 attacks. He gained media coverage, resulting in international outrage over his plans and pleas from world leaders to cancel the event. In early September 2010, Jones cancelled and pledged never to burn a Quran.[1] Jones's threat sparked protests in the Middle East and Asia, in which a total of 20 people were killed.
Jones held a "trial of the Quran" on March 20, 2011 in his Gainesville church. Finding the scriptures guilty of "crimes against humanity," he burned it in the church sanctuary.[2] Protesters in the northern Afghanistan city of Mazar-i-Sharif and elsewhere attacked the United Nations Assistance Mission, killing at least 30 people, including at least seven U.N. workers, and injuring at least 150 people.[3][4][5] Jones disclaimed any responsibility. Norwegian, Swedish, Nepalese and Romanian nationals were among the UN workers killed.[6]
American news analysts criticized and blamed Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, for drawing attention to the Quran burning.[7] On March 31, Karzai publicly denounced the burning and asked for Terry Jones's arrest.[8]

So can you justify over a million Muslim being slaughtered by a largely Christian nation? It was started and carried out by a man who proclaimed himself a "born-again Christian" and made no bones about using this fact to get him elected. Why are the Christians not speaking out about this? Where are the religious leaders of Christianity and Judiasm (and hell, even atheists don't belive in the carte blanche murder of people for no other reason than oil) speaking on behalf of Iraqis and Afghanis?

Again...a million dead Muslims in less than 10 years. But complete silence from the atheists and Christians alike.

[HijabiGirl]

Oh and I would like to thank Pete for breaking my "dislike" cherry. I consider it high praise that a racist, bigoted, homophobe doesn't like what I have to say.

[biteme]

So can you justify over a million Muslim being slaughtered by a largely Christian nation? It was started and carried out by a man who proclaimed himself a "born-again Christian" and made no bones about using this fact to get him elected. Why are the Christians not speaking out about this? Where are the religious leaders of Christianity and Judiasm (and hell, even atheists don't belive in the carte blanche murder of people for no other reason than oil) speaking on behalf of Iraqis and Afghanis?

Again...a million dead Muslims in less than 10 years. But complete silence from the atheists and Christians alike.

Seems that person slowed the killing down, think over 2 million Muslims killed each other the previous ten years
Guess it's a step in the right direction, but just can't seem to stop Muslims from killing altogether

[Whisper]

How Geeti Shafia’s tombstone came to be engraved with a mistaken date
The correction may be slated for spring, two years after her murder
For Ali Altaie, the warm spring weather can’t come soon enough. The co-director of the Hamza Cemetery, an Islamic burial ground in
Laval, Que., has been fielding frequent phone calls in the wake of the Shafia “honour killing” trial that saw Mohammad Shafia, his wife, Tooba Yahya, and son Hamed convicted on four counts of first-degree murder. Their victims, Rona Amir Mohammad and sisters Zainab, Sahar and Geeti are buried in a neat row in Altaie’s cemetery. And people keep calling to tell him about a disconcerting mistake on one of their graves that the family doesn’t appear to care enough about to correct.

At 13, Geeti was the youngest of those killed and dumped into the Rideau Canal at Kingston, Ont. But her date of birth, barely visible above the snow on the grounds of the cemetery, is erroneously chiselled on her tombstone as “22-10-1991”—the same date inscribed on the grave of her beloved, 17-year-old big sister Sahar, which sits beside hers. “We’ll fix it,” Altaie tells Maclean’s, clearly frustrated with the attention brought by the mistake.

But any alterations will have to wait. The company that provides tombstones for the cemetery won’t make repairs to them during the winter because the ground is frozen. “They’re supposed to go and fix it as soon as the weather is good,” says Altaie.

It’s not clear why the mistake hasn’t already been corrected—though it is perhaps hardly surprising given that Geeti’s father, the man convicted of her brutal, premeditated murder, once infamously spat, “May the devil s–t on their graves!” while referring to her and her sisters. Altaie says he gave the correct information to the company, which made the error. Now that the issue has risen to prominence, Altaie says a person claiming to be a cousin of the Shafias has also called to ask that Geeti’s birthdate be changed on her tombstone. With that blessing, Altaie says the cemetery will foot the bill for the change, which he expects to cost $200. “It doesn’t matter how much it costs,” says Altaie.

Maclean’s readers feel the same way. After senior writer Michael Friscolanti wrote of the gravestone mix-up in the Feb. 13 issue, many wrote letters expressing shock, distress and confusion over the mistake. “What an incredibly sad thing to think that this was not noticed and corrected right away,” said Sarnia, Ont., resident Carole Mitro. Others, meanwhile, have expressed their desire to help have Geeti’s real birthday inscribed on her tombstone. “She is owed this one small kindness after having been failed in her short life,” wrote Jennifer Tyrrell.
[...]
“If respect is not shown to the living, it is not likely to be shown to the dead.”http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/02/21/a-telling-mistake/

http://i40.tinypic.com/2motdfa.jpg]

I personally am going to follow up on this myself,if its a manner of money Ill arrange that by collecting from strangers if I have to
b/c I dont see the people that "want the devil to shit on their graves" willing to right a wrong
Im pissed over this,you cant make mistakes like this let alone let them stay there
I never knew about this mistake

[Whisper]

http://i42.tinypic.com/24mhwgj.jpg
The gravestones of (left to right) Rona Amir Mohammad, Zainab Shafia, Sahar Shafia and Geeti Shafia in the Islamic cemetery in Laval Qc. on Monday, Jan. 30, 2012.

http://i40.tinypic.com/2ccx8go.jpg

[Pete Bondurant]

So can you justify over a million Muslim being slaughtered by a largely Christian nation? It was started and carried out by a man who proclaimed himself a "born-again Christian" and made no bones about using this fact to get him elected. Why are the Christians not speaking out about this? Where are the religious leaders of Christianity and Judiasm (and hell, even atheists don't belive in the carte blanche murder of people for no other reason than oil) speaking on behalf of Iraqis and Afghanis?

Again...a million dead Muslims in less than 10 years. But complete silence from the atheists and Christians alike.

Nowhere near one million Muslims were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan (combined) by U.S. forces. Even so, no persons were killed simply because they were Muslims and the persons in these areas wherein coalition forces are present have not been forced to follow any Christian edicts. In fact, Iraqi Christians are suffering far more since the U.S. led invasion of Iraq than they were under the regime of Saddam Hussein, which goes to show that this military operation has nothing to do with Christianity. As for there being "complete silence" about the death of civilians, innocent or not, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan...I guess you have not been watching MSNBC, CBS, NBC, CNN or reading The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post etc.. for the past nine years.

[biteme]

The religion of love, peace & forgiveness still going at it full steam
Keep people ignorant and uneducated, stuff some BS religion down their throat as a control measure, make them kill family members in the name of religion, wrap your children in explosives and indiscriminately kill everyone in the name of religion and what do you have, Muslims

No forgiveness for the desecrators of the Koran," a section of the crowd shouted. "Only death."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/22/us-afghanistan-korans-idUSTRE81K09T20120222
(Reuters) - Four people were shot dead and dozens wounded in protests in Afghanistan which flared for a second day on Wednesday in several cities over the burning of copies of the Koran, Islam's holy book, at NATO's main base in the country, officials said.

The American Embassy said its staff were in "lockdown" and travel had been suspended as thousands of people expressed fury over the burning, a public relations disaster for U.S.-led NATO forces fighting Taliban militants ahead of the withdrawal of foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.

The U.S. government and the American commander of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan apologized after Afghan laborers found charred copies of the Koran while collecting rubbish at the sprawling Bagram Airbase about an hour's drive north of Kabul.

The apologies failed to contain the anger. Thousands of Afghans took to the streets again, chanting anti-American slogans.

[Ninja0980]

Not as it Christianity has been any more loving over the centuries. And as someone who has a relative who is gay and several more friends that are as well,trust me when I say that the man who is suddenly the Republician Party's frontrunner and darling are linked to people who would like nothing more than to see my relative and friends dead..along with others who don't fit their version of the BIble.
Religion is for controlling people..and nothing more.

[malq]

So can you justify over a million Muslim being slaughtered by a largely Christian nation? It was started and carried out by a man who proclaimed himself a "born-again Christian" and made no bones about using this fact to get him elected. Why are the Christians not speaking out about this? Where are the religious leaders of Christianity and Judiasm (and hell, even atheists don't belive in the carte blanche murder of people for no other reason than oil) speaking on behalf of Iraqis and Afghanis?

Again...a million dead Muslims in less than 10 years. But complete silence from the atheists and Christians alike.

I'll ask again, what is the justification for the current bombing of innocent people in the name of Allah? There is at least one suicide bombing a day, that I read about. How do the justify suicide bombings and death missions like 911 if suicide is forbidden in Islam? Its not just a few kooks. It's a lot of them, and they are backed up by a majority of the Muslim world.

[Pete Bondurant]

Not as it Christianity has been any more loving over the centuries. And as someone who has a relative who is gay and several more friends that are as well,trust me when I say that the man who is suddenly the Republician Party's frontrunner and darling are linked to people who would like nothing more than to see my relative and friends dead..along with others who don't fit their version of the BIble.
Religion is for controlling people..and nothing more.

Rick Santorum is going to kill gay people? Perhaps that is what MSNBC and the Huffington Post want you to believe. Who is the one being controlled here?

[malq]

Oh and I would like to thank Pete for breaking my "dislike" cherry. I consider it high praise that a racist, bigoted, homophobe doesn't like what I have to say.

Patience little grasshopper. Apparently you are the last one on this site to know Pete is a gay, black man, who works with different embassies around the world to bring peace and harmony withing cultures. I would have popped your cherry long ago if I knew I was the type of guy you were looking for.

I am also curious if you have any insight into these statements.

1998 speech to Muslims in California by Omar Ahmad, co-founder of the “Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR):

“Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should
be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”

1995, Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to youth conference in Toledo, Ohio:

“We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America.”

Now, are these two quotes the words of a “Peaceful” religion? If I was in Saudi Arabia and I said that Christianity should be the dominant faith in the Muslim world, I would probably be stoned to death!

[Whisper]

Man defends testifying against niece’s family in Shafia trial

KINGSTON, Ont. - A man who helped convict his niece of killing three of her daughters and her husband's first wife says he has been ostracized from his family and friends.
"At the beginning, not just in Afghan society, some of the Canadians abandoned me," said Latif Hyderi, a 65-year-old Montreal man. "We would go to the mosque and no one would talk to me."

Hyderi appeared at the Kingston Mills murder trial in November to testify that Mohammad Shafia, Shafia's wife and Hyderi's niece Tooba Yahya and their some, Hamed.

They were each found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder, for killing daughters Zainab, Sahar, Geeti, and Shafia's first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad. The bodies of the four women were found in a car submerged at the Rideau Canal locks in Kingston on June 30, 2009. The Crown was told the women were part of an honour killing because of their acceptance of Western ideals and trends.

Hyderi, who speaks neither English nor French and spoke with QMI Agency through his son, Reza, said the women's deaths were made more tragic because Zainab was engaged to marry his son, Hussain.

Hyderi had to choose between justice and family the day he learned his future daughter-in-law was found dead in the Rideau Canal.

He testified against Shafia, even though his family and other members of the Afghan society in Montreal urged him not to.

"When the killings happened my father knew it was not an accident because Mr. Shafia told my dad he was going to kill Zainab. For my parents it's everything. He's very disappointed in the reaction to his testimony, though he knew it was reality," Reza said.

At the trial, Hyderi said he tried to convince Mohammad to ease up on the restrictions, that they were living in a whole different culture in Canada.

"If Shafia would listen to me those four women would be alive on this earth," he told the court. "I feel very bad for what they introduced to the community. For me, the children were always clean."

Hussain, now 29, is refusing interviews. Reza said his brother was devastated by what transpired and is trying to put his life back together.

"It's hard for me to see Tooba, my niece, in prison. It's very shameful," Hyderi said. "I swear I was a friend to the Shafias and I never thought they would face such a time.

"No matter what they think - even if they consider me an enemy - I tell the truth and nothing else.

"My duty was to oppose the crime and stand up for reality. In that, I have God with me and I felt it was right."
[...]http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/canada/archives/2012/03/20120302-165556.html

[Pete Bondurant]

These vermin...they are a scourge on society.

[Abroad]

Thank goodness Hyderi hasn't lost sight of the truth and what is important.......

[Whisper]

'Barbaric practice' of so-called honour crimes denounced by Harper]http://i44.tinypic.com/2vtcp50.jpg

The three Shafia daughters and their father's first wife were murdered in 2009 by their parents and eldest brother

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says it is the duty of all Canadians to remember the murdered Shafia daughters and ensure that no one else falls victim to so-called honour crimes.

Harper made the comments during a stop Friday in Montreal, the same city where Geeti, Zainab and Sahar Shafia tried to assimilate into life as Canadian teenagers and where one of the country’s most horrifying murder plots was hatched.

“There is nothing honourable about so-called honour crimes,” he said. “Indeed this is a barbaric practice which our laws rightly deem to be heinous and indefensible acts and nothing less.”

Awareness campaign

Harper announced $348,000 in funding for Montreal’s Shield of Athena Family Services, the non-profit organization for victims of family violence that will be launching an awareness campaign on honour crimes.
Melpa Kamateros, executive director of the Shield of Athena, said her organization has noted a rise in so-called honour crimes.

"For many communities in Quebec, family violence is still a taboo subject," she said.

"To break the taboo, we have to break the silence," she said. "We have to provide services that are linguistically and culturally attuned to the ethnic communities and to victims coming from these communities."
[...]


The prosecution’s case revolved around the notion of family dishonour in the minds of the Shafia parents and eldest brother.

That perceived blight was brought about by the victims' boyfriends and disobedience, according to the Crown.

During the extensive trial, court heard from numerous witnesses who said the women were isolated in a physically and emotionally abusive household and tightly controlled by their parents and brother.
[...]http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/03/16/montreal-honour-killing-shafia-harper.html

[Whisper]

Gala to honour slain Shafia women

http://i43.tinypic.com/of4vfk.jpg
Flowers were placed next to the Kingston Mills Locks on where a car with the four Shafia women inside drowned

KINGSTON, ON - The four women of the Shafia family, murdered at Kingston Mills along the Rideau Canada in 2009, will be remembered at this year's Canadians for Women in Afghanistan Gala in Kingston.

"We, as a chapter, felt there was no closure," said gala organizer Madeliene Tarasick.
[...]
An education fund is being set up in the women's names and will be introduced at the gala on May 17 gala at St. Lawrence College.

Tarasick said that while their organization's mandate is to educate girls in Afghanistan, train teachers in the war-torn country and build schools, the conclusion to the three-month murder trial couldn't go unrecognized.

"We have that natural connectedness," said Tarasick. "First, the fact this happened was tragic enough. Second, it happened right under our noses in Kingston. We just felt we had to respond in some fashion."

The money raised until Sept. 30 will go to assist the education of girls or young women in Afghanistan.

This may include help with paying tuition fees, purchasing of computers or other resources or providing safe travel to and from schools.

Tarasick said girls sometimes have to go to other villages to continue their education, but their parents fear for their safety if they have to walk.

The 14 chapters of Canadians for Women in Afghanistan have raised $4.5 million since 1996 for their wider group of projects. The Kingston chapter has raised $130,000 since 2003.

The organization recently partnered with CIDA, paying for half of a $1-million program to train 2,000 teachers in Afghanistan.

When the Kingston organizers met to plan this May's gathering - which will feature speaker William Crosbie, Canada's last ambassador to Afghanistan - they realized they had to pay homage, in a quiet and meaningful way, to the Shafia women.

"At the end, justice was served. Justice needed to be served," said Tarasick, who praised Kingston Police and the judicial system for their diligence. "After that, we felt there was a slight vacuum. There's need for closure, to have something positive come out of it."

Donations for the Shafia fund or Canadians for Women in Afghanistan can be mailed to: Marg Stewart, 2970 Unity Road, RR1 Elginburg, ON K0H 1M0http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/canada/archives/2012/04/20120404-191826.html

[Whisper]

It didn’t take long for the Shafia family to file appeals on their January first-degree murder convictions.

At first blush, one might think an appeal would have a decent chance of success.

After all, there was no eyewitness testimony to the murders, or a confession.

Expert evidence was unable to determine precisely when and where the four deceased women were killed.

There was no evidence of precisely who did what to whom.

Couple that with a lengthy trial accompanied by a lengthy charge to the jury. Surely, there were some legal errors.

But it isn’t easy to overturn a jury verdict.

A jury doesn’t provide reasons for its decision.

Given that, an appellate court is left examining the trial record, looking for legal errors.

But errors alone aren’t enough for an appeal to succeed.

That’s because of a provision in the Criminal Code that allows an appellate court to dismiss an appeal in spite of legal errors in the trial if the court is of the opinion “no substantial wrong or miscarriage of justice has occurred.”

This doesn’t only apply to minor legal errors, which would have had no impact on the verdict.

It also applies to serious errors that would otherwise justify allowing an appeal and ordering a new trial, but for the fact the evidence at trial was so overwhelming, there has been no substantial wrong or miscarriage of justice.

The trial judge, the experienced Justice Robert Maranger, had no doubt of the guilt of the three Shafias as evidenced by his statement after the jury verdict, “it’s difficult to conceive of a more despicable, more heinous crime.”

Certainly, the evidence of murder and the fact it was planned and deliberate was overwhelming at the Shafia trial.

It included the recent purchase of the used Nissan for the trip; the Lexus paint scratch on the Parks Canada garbage barrel; damage to the Lexus headlight matching the shards left at the crime scene; damage to the Lexus front matching damage to the Nissan’s rear; Internet searches on how to commit murder; the timing of the cellphone calls; discussions with the motel manager over how many people would be staying in the rooms; the location of the sunken car; bruises on three of the victims’ heads; the turned-off ignition; the driver’s side window being open, with none of the victims having tried to escape.

All this and more overwhelmingly pointed to murder as opposed to an accident, as the defence argued.

The evidence may have been circumstantial but circumstantial evidence is often more trustworthy than eyewitness accounts and is often used to convict.

The wire-tap evidence unmasked the mastermind behind the murders as Mohammed Shafia.

Speaking of his recently deceased daughters as “filthy whores” or the statements, “there was no other way, they committed treason from beginning to end, they betrayed kindness, they betrayed Islam, they betrayed our religion and creed, they betrayed our tradition, they betrayed everything,” and “even if they hoist me up onto the gallows, nothing is more dear to me than my honour,” all made his identity clear.

But it was the totality of the wiretap evidence, along with the many lies the Shafias recited during police interviews, plus the lies told by the parents during their Hail Mary testimony at trial, that laid bare the conspiracy engaged in by the father, mother and son.

It would be unusual for anyone convicted of first-degree murder not to appeal the conviction.

[...]
I read nothing into this appeal other than a desperate tactic by desperate people.

After all, we know Paul Bernardo and Robert (Willie) Pickton both appealed their murder convictions to the Supreme Court of Canada. And we know how that worked out for them.http://www.lfpress.com/comment/2012/04/13/19630346.html

[Tundratot]

Hamed Shafia, his father, Mohammed, and his mother, Tooba Mohammed Yahya, were sentenced to life in prison for murder, with Judge Robert Maranger excoriating their "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."

Leading Muslim thinkers wholeheartedly endorsed the Canadian judge's verdict, insisting that "honor murders" had no place and no support in Islam.

"There is nothing in the Quran that justifies honor killings. There is nothing that says you should kill for the honor of the family," said Taj Hargey, director of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford in England.

"This idea that 'somehow a girl has besmirched our honor and therefore the thing to do is kill her' is bizarre, and Muslims should stop using this defense," he said, arguing that the practice is cultural, not religious in origin.

"You cannot say this is what Islam approves of. You can say this is what their culture approves of," he said. . . .

Although the practice may not be Islamic, she said, not all Muslims understand the distinction.

"It is a problem within Islam because of how Muslims often confuse culture and religion," she said. "It's Muslims who have to learn to separate culture and religion. If we don't, Islam will continue to get the bad name that it gets." . . .

"Significant cases are happening within South Asian communities, be it Pakistani, Indian, Sikh, Muslim, Kurdish, Iranian, Middle Eastern communities," she said. . . .

On the other hand, honor murders are not a problem in Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population.

"No such a practice can be found among Indonesian Muslims," said Azyumardi Azra, the director of the graduate school at the State Islamic University in Jakarta, Indonesia.http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/30/islam-doesnt-justify-honor-murders-experts-insist/?iid=article_sidebar

[sheevaa]

They got life? GOOD. The only positive thing to come from all of this mess. RIP ladies.