Did Canadian honor killing end in death of 4 women?

[Whisper]

Shafia murder trial: Court sees videotape of Shafia interrogation

KINGSTON, Ont. –
[...]
In the interrogation,

RCMP Insp. Shahin Mehdizadeh spends little time trying to build rapport.

“Have you killed them yourself?” he asks, before the interview is 10 minutes old.

“No,” Shafia replies.

“Have you helped in killing them?” the inspector asks.

“No,” Shafia says, insisting that he considered his children “pure and sinless kids.”

“I loved them with my heart,” he says in Dari. His interviewer, a native of Iran, speaks Farsi, a variant of Shafia’s language.

Mehdizadeh immediately calls Shafia a liar and implores him to offer a reason why the officer should believe him.

“I have come to this country for its laws,” Shafia says, when Mehdizadeh says Canada is a country that has respect for all life.

Mehdizadeh tells Shafia that the victims did not die in an accident, as the family said publicly after the deaths.

“Someone has pushed them,” the officer says.

“This killer should be found,” Shafia responds.

A few minutes later, Shafia says his children “told a lot of lies,” including the false claim that he beat them.

“Then all of your children are liars?” Mehdizadeh asks.

“They are lying,” Shafia replies.

Later, Shafia acknowledges once slapping one child.

“Slowly I have hit like this in the face,” he tells the officer, as he taps the right side of his face with his right palm.

“That you should not come home late at night because here is very dangerous.”

The interrogation was done on the morning of July 23, the day after Shafia, his wife and son were arrested in Montreal. Yahya was subjected to a gruelling, six-hour interrogation the night before, in which she said the trio was at the canal when the Sentra went into the water, though she claimed she did not see what happened.
Prosecutors allege the family’s Lexus SUV was used to push the smaller car over a stone ledge into the water. Bits of auto headlight plastic found at the site matched the Lexus
.
“You were there that night,” Mehdizadeh says, after explaining some of the evidence to Shafia.

“I wasn’t,” Shafia responds.

“Your wife said you had been there.”

“No,” Shafia repeats.

“Your car was there that night,” Mehdizadeh says.

Our car was at the hotel,” Shafia says.

The inspector puts the police theory to him about the motive for the killings, suggesting that as a good Muslim man, he may have been upset with something his children did, including Zainab, who wanted to marry a young Pakistani man.

Shafia denies he had any concern about the behaviour of his children.

“We don’t have any issues,” he tells the officer.

Prosecutors claim Shafia believed his honour had been tarnished because his daughters consorted with boys, wore revealing clothes and disobeyed him.

Where is your honour?” Mehdizadeh asks.

My honour is my honour,” Shafia answers.
You don’t have honour.”

“No, don’t say this word,” Shafia says.

Defence lawyers had a chance Wednesday morning to question a man who said Shafia tried to recruit him, during a phone call, to help murder Zainab.

Fazil Javid said he can’t produce any phone records to back his claim and he doesn’t know exactly when the call happened.

“It doesn’t mean that I didn’t talk to Mr. Shafia,” Javid testified, during questioning by defence lawyer David Crowe, who represents Yahya. Javid lives in Sweden and is a brother of Yahya.

Javid testified Tuesday he spoke to Shafia on the telephone in late May or early June 2009, while Shafia was in Dubai on business. He had hoped to intervene in a family problem with Zainab, who had run away from home and wanted to marry a young Pakistani man, against everyone’s advice.

Javid said Shafia asked him to invite Zainab, her mother and another sibling to Sweden, where they could go to a body of water and have a barbecue and then throw Zainab in the water and drown her. Crowe asked Javid why he said, during testimony at a preliminary inquiry, that the phone call was in early May.

“I might have been mixed up,” Javid answered.
[..]

http://www.montrealgazette.com/Shafi...#ixzz1dLu89dxb

[Whisper]

This image from a Kingston police videotape shows murder suspect Mohammad Shafia being interrogated in 2009.

KINGSTON, Ont. – Accused multiple murderer Mohammad Shafia talked of wanting to kill his eldest daughter Zainab, the Montreal man’s murder trial has heard from a male relative of the Shafia family for the second time this week.
He said, ‘I’m not happy … and she didn’t do a good thing; if I was there I would have killed her,’ ” Latif Hyderi testified Thursday, recounting a conversation with Shafia.
[...]
Hyderi said he had a telephone conversation with Shafia, while Shafia was in Dubai on business. Shafia said his daughter “wanted to dishonour me” and he called her a “whore” and “prostitute,” he testified.
“She is a dirty curse to me,” Hyderi said, quoting Shafia.
[...]
The man said he spoke to Zainab about her impulsive decision to marry. She told him that her father had never called her by her name, instead using insults like “black snake,” he testified. Zainab told Hyderi she was constantly belittled by her father and subject to rigid rules about where she could go and whom she could see, he said.
[..]
“The only reason that I’m marrying is to get the revenge (for) the cruelty I suffer (from) my father,” Hyderi testified, repeating what he said Zainab told him.
[..]
“There is a lot of cruelty or oppression practised on me from Tooba and Shafia,” Hyderi testified that he was told one day when he bumped into Rona while walking in a park in St. Léonard. He said Rona claimed to have been “beaten a few times” and that she had “significant fear” of Shafia.
Hyderi acknowledged that he had served four years in prison in Afghanistan, during questioning by defence lawyer Peter Kemp.
“I was against the Russian regime who had invaded our land and we did jihad,” he said, explaining why he was jailed.
Kemp asked Hyderi if he was sentenced to life in prison for attempted murder in which a man was attacked with knives in Afghanistan.
“It’s a fabrication,” Hyderi said, later acknowledging that there “was an incident” when he was 14 or 15 years old involving his brother and his brother’s business partner. He insisted he did not go to prison.
Late Thursday, jurors began listening to audio recordings secretly made by police before the Shafias were arrested on July 22, 2009.

The first recording came from a bug hidden inside the family’s Pontiac mini-van on July 18. On that day, Shafia, Yahya and Hamed drove to Kingston from Montreal on invitation from police, who had concocted an elaborate ruse. Officers told the three they believed they had figured out how the victims died in an “accident” and they wanted to demonstrate their theory at the spot where the car was found underwater.
Police had mounted a phony surveillance camera at the scene and when they got there, officers said they would seek to get any video the camera captured.
“There was no camera, they’re lying,” Yahya is heard saying inside the van, after the trio left Kingston to head back to Montreal. “There was no camera. If there had been a camera, they would have taken that out first thing on the very first day.”

Later, Yahya adds: “There was no camera over there. I looked around, there wasn’t any. If God forbid, God forbid, there was one in that little room, all three of us would have been recorded.”
Shafia responds: “No, had there been one there, they would have checked it first thing and they would have held you to account that night.”
He also notes that it was “pitch darkness” there that night.
“There wasn’t the slightest glimmer of light or electricity,” Shafia is heard saying. “Even that room’s light was off.”[...]

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/...#ixzz1dMtRqgCT

[Whisper]

Montreal family's trial hears potentially incriminating wiretaps
11/11/2011

Montreal husband and wife accused of murdering their family were caught on wiretaps apparently placing themselves at the scene of the deaths, despite swearing to police they had not been there and had no idea what happened.
A few weeks after their three daughters and the husband's other wife in a polygamous marriage died in what Tooba Mohammad Yahya and Mohammad Shafia told police must have been a terrible accident, they are heard on potentially incriminating wiretaps fretting about what evidence police have.
[...]
The three can be heard on the wiretap, played in court, fretting about the possibility of a camera, but ultimately concluding police were lying.

"That night there was no electricity there," Shafia says. "It was pitch darkness. You remember, Tooba?"

"Yes," she replies.

The family was speaking Dari, a dialect from their native Afghanistan, but the audio recordings played in court were translated and subtitled in English.

"They say they want to see if the camera has recorded anything or not," Hamed can be heard telling his parents.

"There was no camera over there," Yahya says, adding that she had checked.

"No, had there been one there they would have checked it first thing and they would have held you to account that night," Shafia says, apparently to his wife.

Toward the end of the wiretap — one of several to be played for the jury — Hamed warns his parents that police might have bugged the car.
The jury has previously seen videos of police interviews of the family the day the bodies were discovered. All three tell police that they had checked into a motel in Kingston that night on their way home from a trip to Niagara Falls, Ont.

Zainab borrowed the car key to ostensibly get clothes out of the car, then the next morning, the four women and girls were gone and so was the car, they said. Zainab, who didn't have a licence, was eager to practise driving so she must have gone for a 2 a.m. joy ride with her sisters and Rona Amir Mohammad and had an accident, the family reasoned.

In an interrogation July 22, the day the family was arrested, Yahya tells police the three of them were at the scene that night, but that her husband must be responsible because she just heard a splash then promptly fainted. She recanted that story the next day, court heard.

Court also heard Thursday from Latif Hyderi, Yahya's uncle, who said the sisters were like "political prisoners" in their home, and Zainab wanted to "sacrifice" herself to marriage in the hope life might improve for her sisters.

But the marriage appeared to make matters worse, with the wedding degenerating into a major family drama and her father telling a relative he would have killed her if he was not away on business, Hyderi said. The marriage was annulled the next day.

"She said dear uncle, there was a lot of cruelty toward me," Latif Hyderi testified through an interpreter. "The only reason that I'm marrying in order to get the revenge of the cruelty to which I suffer from my father ... I would like to sacrifice myself for my sisters ... at least that my other sisters will get their freedom after me," he quoted Zainab as saying.

Hyderi said he appealed to Hamed, who court heard took on his father's role at home when his dad was away on business, to ease the pressure on the girls.

"They're like political prisoners," Hyderi said he told Hamed. "They go to school and brought back at home. They don't have permission to watch TV, they don't have permission to go to a party ... this is completely against humanity."

http://www.citytv.com/toronto/cityne...ating-wiretaps

[Tundratot]

Their words on the wire tap are pretty incriminating. I don't know how they can refute them. Combined with the fact that only members of the family that were in poor standing with the father are dead, no one the father gave a rat shit about, it's damning. But I still would like to see a map of the lock with the drive path or a re-enactment of the theory of the crime.

[VXIII]

I would too, I dont get how they dont bug cars and homes more often when someone is suspected of a crime, seems reasonable to me... I guess in some cases words could be misconstrued but these people are clearly stating what they did...

[Whisper]

WIRE TAP TESTIMONY:Some dramatic evidence was introduced today at the Shafia Murder Trial in Kingston.

"THE WIRE TAP RECORDINGS WERE SO DISTURBING SO VILE THAT MEMBERS OF THE COURTROOM GALLERY COULD BE HEARD GASPING AS MOHAMMEDS VOICE IS PLAYED WHERE HE'S TALKING ABOUT THE REASONS AS TO WHY HIS DAUGHTERS HAD TO DIE AND HOW THEY WERE A DISHONOUR TO HIS FAMILY."
SECRET LISTENING DEVICES WERE PLACED IN THE SHAFIA'S MINI VAN AND THEIR MONTREAL HOME.

HAMED'S CELL PHONE WAS BUGGED AS WELL.
THE SECRET POLICE RECORDINGS INTERCEPTED SOME RATHER DISTURBING CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN THE THREE ACCUSED IN THE WEEKS LEADING UP TO THEIR ARRESTS.
MOHAMMED SHAFIA CAN BE HEARD CURSING HIS THREE DECEASED TEENAGE DAUGHTERS.
"GOD'S CURSE ON THEM FOR GENERATION!
MAY THE DEVIL SHIT ON THEIR GRAVES. IS THAT WHAT A DAUGHTER SHOULD BE? WOULD A DAUGHTER BE SUCH A WHORE."
THE CROWN'S THEORY IS THAT THE THREE DAUGHTERS AND THEIR AUNT WERE VICTIMS OF AN HONOUR KILLING.
EVIDENCE PRESENTED AT THE TRIAL SUGGESTS THAT AFGHANI-BORN SHAFIA WAS UNHAPPY WITH HIS TEENAGE DAUGHTERS.
.... DISGUSTED THAT THEY HAD ADOPTED A WESTERN LIFESTYLE BY WEARING MAKE-UP AND HAVING BOYFRIENDS.
DURING ONE CONVERSATION IN THEIR BUGGED CAR, THE FAMILY PATRIARCH CAN BE HEARD DEFENDING HIS HONOUR -- WHILE DISCUSSING WITH HIS SON AND WIFE POSSIBLE PROOF POLICE MAY HAVE CONNECTING THEM TO THE DEATHS OF FAMILY MEMBERS.
"EVEN IF THEY HOIST ME UP ONTO THE GALLOWS, NOTHING IS MORE DEAR TO ME THAT MY HONOUR.
LET'S LEAVE OUR DESTINY TO GOD AND MAY GOD NEVER MAKE ME, YOU OR YOUR MOTHER HONOURLESS."
IN ANOTHER PRIVATE CONVERSATION ABOUT THE DEATHS OF HIS DAUGHTERS -- SHAFIA TELLS HIS SON :
"I AM HAPPY AND MY CONSCIENCE IS CLEAR.
THEY HAVEN'T DONE GOOD AND GOD PUNISHED THEM. "
AS THE TRANSLATED TAPES WERE PLAYED TO THE JURY, SHAFIA SOUNDED DEFIANT AND SHOWED NO REMORSE IN HIS MANY LECTURES TO HIS WIFE AND SON --OFTEN QUOTING RELIGION AND GOD.
THE RECORDINGS WERE MADE RIGHT UP UNTIL THE SHAFIAS WERE ARRESTED AND CHARGED WITH MASS MURDER IN JULY OF 2009 -- LESS THAN A MONTH AFTER THE BODIES OF THE FOUR WOMEN WERE PULLED FROM A SUBMERGED CAR AT THE KINGSTON MILLS LOCKS.
"HAMED SHAFIA'S INTERROGATION TAPE FROM THE DAY HE WAS ARRESTED AND CHARGED WITH FIRST DEGREE MURDER WAS PLAYED TO THE JUDGE AND JURY THIS AFTERNOON AND IT'S EXPECTED THAT THAT VIDEO WILL CONTINUE TOMORROW.
[..]

http://www.ckwstv.com/index.cfm?page=news&id=5936

I didnt make the font all in caps thats how its posted on site


Wiretaps record Shafia comparing daughter to ‘whore’
nov 14 2011

It’s a lesson of enormous gravity of which Mohammed Shafia reminds his son Hamed as they talk, the two of them, a police-planted bug recording every word they say, inside the family’s Pontiac Montana minivan
[...]
It’s close to midnight. “Be I dead or alive, nothing in the world is above (your) honour,”
Shafia says. “Isn’t that right, my son?”
An example of “nasty or dishonour,” he offers: If “your sister or my daughter or your mother’s daughter” is with a man that Sharia law forbids, anyone other than a father, brother, uncle or grandparents.
Prosecutors on Monday presented a flurry of wiretap evidence to the jury in the trial of Shafia, his wife and son, all charged with murder in the 2009 deaths.
The wiretaps, clandestinely placed on their phones, in the family’s home in Montreal’s Saint Leonard borough, in the van, in a police car taking them away after their arrests, captured not only Shafia’s absence of regret, but his vociferous animosity toward the girls, particularly Zainab.
They also captured Hamed’s middle-of-the-night telephone conversations with one of the other children in the family — who cannot be identified as per a court-ordered publication ban — seeking assurance from Hamed neither he nor their parents would kill themselves.
The prosecution contends the killings were based on the concept of honour, that this family, which hails from Afghanistan, was shamed by the rebellious western-cultural leanings of the eldest daughters. The defence suggests the car made its way into the canal by accident.
At one point in the conversations, Shafia, 58, tells his 41-year-old wife Tooba Yahya that they have done nothing as parents to deserve the behaviour of their daughters.
“May the devil sh-- on their graves!” he says. “Is that what a daughter should be? Would (a daughter) be such a whore?”
On July 20, he is continuing his arguments in the van. The girls “messed up . . . They were treacherous,” he tells his wife. “They betrayed both themselves and us.”
e compares them to prostitutes: “Like this woman standing on the side of the road and if you stop the car, she would go with you anywhere.”
He pleads with Yahya, that what’s happening “isn’t harder” than watching them with boyfriends.
“For this reason,” he says, whenever he sees their pictures, “I am consoled. I say to myself, ‘You did well. Would they come back to life a hundred times, for you to do the same again.’ That is how hurt I am.”
Tooba reminds him the girls said he was meddling in their affairs, which annoys him. “We used to admonish her not to hang around with boys . . . that wasn’t bad advice.” He’s talking about Zainab, who at one point had a Pakistani boyfriend.
Police also intercept a call to Hamed on July 20 from a Qatar Airways agent, to confirm Hamed’s flight to Dubai on July 22.
During that call, Hamed, 20, asks if it’s possible to leave the very next day.
Past 3 a.m. on July 22, Hamed speaks on the telephone to one of the other children, who is at another location. This child is worried about the events buffeting the family. “Hamed, should I kill myself Hamed?” the child asks in a quiet voice.
“Don’t do anything like that.”
In a follow-up call, the child seeks reassurance that Hamed, Shafia and Yahya won’t commit suicide. “Don’t do nothing stupid, okay?” the child implores.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/a...ghter-to-whore

[Tundratot]

Was that a younger child? Perhaps a girl who was already thinking that her family was going to kill her for some imagined dishonor?

[Whisper]

Was that a younger child? Perhaps a girl who was already thinking that her family was going to kill her for some imagined dishonor?

yeah a younger one not at the scene
I took it to mean the child thought the parent and Hamed were going to commit suicide
Prob some head game the three played with the kids trying to turn them against the 3 girls and Rona

[Rockin Ma]

So the woman with the girls was their aunt? Not wife? Why did they kill her though? And how do you move somewhere (in this case from Afghanistan to Canada) and expect the children not to adopt the customs and want to fit in? Why move at all if that is such a terrible thing? Should've stayed in his native land, but I suspect he'd have found a way to kill that particular daughter no matter what and perhaps these victims have a better chance at justice being tried in Canada rather than their native homeland where women don't matter as much.

[Tundratot]

So the woman with the girls was their aunt? Not wife? Why did they kill her though? And how do you move somewhere (in this case from Afghanistan to Canada) and expect the children not to adopt the customs and want to fit in? Why move at all if that is such a terrible thing? Should've stayed in his native land, but I suspect he'd have found a way to kill that particular daughter no matter what and perhaps these victims have a better chance at justice being tried in Canada rather than their native homeland where women don't matter as much.

Rona was the Shafi's first wife, and the family described her to authorities as a live-in cousin. Many Muslim/Arab societies prefer first cousin marriages, so saying she was an aunt wouldn't have been far wrong. I think their motives for killing her were that she was (1) barren, (2) unpopular with the second wife, (3) advocating for the girls, (4) wanting a divorce, all causing friction in the house. The second eldest daughter in the car, Sahar, was supposed "given" her to raise as her own.

As to moving, I guess money was more interesting than culture. Shafi wanted the economic opportunities here, for himself and his sons, but not to in any way allow his daughters or wives out from under his thumb.

[Whisper]

Just a midday update from courtroom
Interrogation tapes continue at Shafia trial

KINGSTON, Ont. - A young man accused, along with his parents, of killing his three sisters told a police interrogator his mother had nothing to do with the deaths and that she had been talking about suicide, court heard Tuesday.

The jury in the murder trial watched a video of the interrogation of Hamed Shafia, 20, after he was arrested more than two years ago in the deaths of his sisters and one of his father's two wives in a polygamous marriage.

[...]
The police officers who took turns interrogating Hamed press him on inconsistencies in his story. He mostly sticks to the story he and his parents originally told police — that they had no idea what happened and the car ending up in the canal must have been a terrible accident.

But at one point, Det.-Const. Steve Koopman tells Hamed they can place him at the scene, and asks, "Did you mean to get involved with this?"

"No," Hamed replies, hanging his head.

He asks about his mother and says she has not been doing well since the deaths and has even talked about suicide.

"My mom, she doesn't have anything to do with it," Hamed says. "I told you before. she's like nothing to do with it because she was not even herself that night. She was really tired, she had no idea where we are and everything."

She took some pills and fell asleep, he adds.

Hamed, his mother Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, and his father Mohammad Shafia, 58, have each pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder.

For the rest of the interview Hamed asserts his innocence and presses the police officers to disclose what evidence they have against him so he can clear up any "misunderstandings." But the officers point out that he cannot explain why pieces of a headlight of the family's Lexus SUV, which Hamed said he was driving that night, ended up at the scene.

The Crown alleges the accused used the Lexus to push the other car into the water with the four victims inside.

The jury has previously watched the interrogations of Yahya and Shafia. During Yahya's six-hour interrogation, she admits that the three of them were at the scene that night, but that she fainted and didn't know what happened
[...]

http://news.ca.msn.com/canada/interr...t-shafia-trial

[Whisper]

I really wish they would get to whether the women were drugged or knocked out or what b/c they drowned so what caused them to not escape
Cops said they didnt even attempt to escape so has to be a reason,I know they said a couple had blunt force trauma

Maybe they were drugged with moms pills?

[Dakota Valkyrie]

Backing up a little to the wiretap tapes played yesterday:

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

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

Most of the rest is in the article Whisper put up earlier: http://www.sasklifestyles.com/articl...template=cpArt

This man thinks he's above everything and everyone. I hope he finds himself on the bottom of the food chain in prison.

[Whisper]

Blatchford: Brother accused in honour killing keen to see pictures of dead sisters

KINGSTON, Ont. — In the morning it was starkly ghoulish, with Hamed Shafia, in a four-hour-long interview on the day of his arrest for murder, livening up only when the officer interrogating him brandished pictures of his dead sisters and his father's first wife.

Can I . . . ?" he asked, alertly eyeing the photographs in Kingston Police Sgt. Mike Boyles' hand.

"No, you know what?" Boyles replied. "Why should you look at them if you can't look at me and tell the truth . . . Why would they (meaning Hamed) want to see them (the dead women) like this? You can't even tell the truth of how they ended up like that."

Nonetheless, Boyles handed over the pictures, which showed the bodies of two of Hamed's three sisters — Zainab, Sahar and Geeti — and his father's first wife Rona Amir Mohammad, as they were recovered from a black Nissan found submerged at the Kingston Mills locks on June 30, 2009.
"So it's the time when they remove them?" asked Hamed, who is now 20 and then just 18.
"Yeah, this is them being brought out of the water, yeah Hamed," Boyles said.

"How come she's bleeding?" Hamed asked. He didn't appear to be disturbed, merely interested, as if he were a college student on a tour of a morgue.
Boyles explained, not unkindly, that the girl wasn't bleeding, but that what he was seeing was the result of blood pooling in the body, as it does at death.


"There are only two sisters there," Hamed said, obviously keen on seeing the third picture as well.

Yeah," Boyles said, "they only have pictures of two."

Boyles was the second investigator to have a go at the young man on July 22, 2009, the day that Hamed, his 41-year-old mother Tooba Mohammad Yahya and his 58-year-old father Mohammad Shafia were arrested and charged with four counts each of first-degree murder.
The lengthy video of that interview was played Tuesday before Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Maranger and the jury presiding over the trio's trial, where they are all pleading not guilty.
Det. Steve Koopman preceded Boyles — police thought he might form a bit of a bond with the young man, with whom he had dealt earlier in the investigation. Koopman was meant to be the soft touch; Boyles, a strapping fellow, was meant to be more confrontational.


Between them, they tried every trick in the interrogators' book: solicitousness, culturally appropriate pleas (the family is Afghan, so in this case that meant nods to honour and protestations of respect), the careful laying out of some of the mound of evidence police had gathered, confrontation, expressions of disappointment, anger and finally shock tactics (such as when Boyles showed the dead girls' pictures and later played a video excerpt of Yahya admitting the three had been at the crime scene).

The detectives turned themselves inside out to no avail: the young man before them was made of granite. He would not be moved from his story, even as one or another of the officers offered evidence disproving his most blatant lies.

Boyles' last big card was the video excerpt of Yahya's brief admission that she, her husband and son had been at the locks that night and had even heard a splash. The admission had come that same night, and several times Boyles deked out of the room to see if the clip was ready to be played.

Once, as he was about to leave, Hamed asked, "if I can look at it once again?" He meant the pictures of the bodies.
"No," Boyles replied.

"No," Hamed repeated, then, "I just have a look at this? I didn't catch your name either . . ." Boyles repeated his name.

"OK," Hamed said. "Can I see it, my files (the pictures)?" When Boyles returned, he had another picture with him. "Sorry Hamed," he said. "This was the one you wanted to see?"
"Yeah," he said.

The detective didn't hand it over immediately, but continued banging his head against the wall that was this boy for a while longer.
Then he said, "Did you want to see these again?"

"After this, we're done?" Hamed asked.

They chatted a bit more — Boyles asking if Hamed felt badly about what happened to his sisters, Hamed saying that, of course, he did.
At last, he leaned in and took the pictures.

"The position they were that time . . ." he began.
Boyles told him drowning was not a peaceful death, that it was horrible. The news, if it was news to him, washed over the boy and disappeared.

"Like the position you're in (when you drown), that position you come out? You get stuck in that position, I guess?" he asked.
"Sure Hamed," Boyles replied. "I'm not a doctor."

So that was the morning session, this boy with his unseemly interest in seeing the bodies of his sisters.

Later, came a witness — he can't be identified yet — who brought a welcome measure of unintended hilarity to the proceedings.

This fellow, a fellow Afghan and former student at Queen's, was hired as an interpreter by Shafia's lawyer, Peter Kemp, and, unknown to Kemp, also by Shafia to re-investigate the case, or, as the witness put it, to "try to uncover the truth."

In the course of this, he managed to review all the disclosure prosecutors had made to the defence, and show the accused trio, as he said, "what police had against them." He visited each in prison, immediately pronounced Shafia (who famously cursed his dead daughters as whores and prayed the devil would foul their graves) a deeply religious person incapable of lying, let alone worse, and told Hamed "just speaking with you for five minutes is enough for me to know you are not that kind of guy."


The witness was a one-man show: He did imitations of Yahya's strident voice and heavy accent from the Parwan area north of Kabul, and, as he gravely listened to his own recorded chat with Hamed, which he later duly presented to the police so "they could learn from their mistakes, reconsider their decision and discharge" the Kingston trio, he compulsively made notes "to help the court."

[...]

http://www.canada.com/Blatchford+Bro...#ixzz1dpltWny8

[VXIII]

Rona was the Shafi's first wife, and the family described her to authorities as a live-in cousin. Many Muslim/Arab societies prefer first cousin marriages, so saying she was an aunt wouldn't have been far wrong. I think their motives for killing her were that she was (1) barren, (2) unpopular with the second wife, (3) advocating for the girls, (4) wanting a divorce, all causing friction in the house. The second eldest daughter in the car, Sahar, was supposed "given" her to raise as her own.

As to moving, I guess money was more interesting than culture. Shafi wanted the economic opportunities here, for himself and his sons, but not to in any way allow his daughters or wives out from under his thumb.

"My mom, she doesn't have anything to do with it," Hamed says. "I told you before. she's like nothing to do with it because she was not even herself that night. She was really tired, she had no idea where we are and everything."

If she was really not there and drugged that night as her son claims, then she sure know what was going on according to what she was saying on the tapes: She says:

That night there was no electricity there," Shafia says. "It was pitch darkness. You remember, Tooba?"

"Yes," she replies.

AND:

“There was no camera, they’re lying,” Yahya is heard saying inside the van, after the trio left Kingston to head back to Montreal. “There was no camera. If there had been a camera, they would have taken that out first thing on the very first day.”

Later, Yahya adds: “There was no camera over there. I looked around, there wasn’t any. If God forbid, God forbid, there was one in that little room, all three of us would have been recorded.”

She knew exactly what was going on and the dirty whore helped murder her own beautiful daughters... (Technically isnt sToopa Yayha just a lowly concubine really, isnt the 2nd wife always the concubine?)

[Tundratot]

She knew exactly what was going on and the dirty whore helped murder her own beautiful daughters... (Technically isnt sToopa Yayha just a lowly concubine really, isnt the 2nd wife always the concubine?)

No, I believe in Islamic countries there's no problem with up to four wives at a time -- any other women around the harem would be concubines. Under Western laws, though, Tooba would be a victim of a bigamous man with no legal standing as a wife.

[Whisper]

This again is the woman whose column I follow I like how she just puts it out there
but here the end of the same conversation between Hamed and the younger sibling
In the one conversation yesterday Hamed seems to insinuate the mom considered suicide and the younger one was worried about that

In this version its like the younger un named one thinks everyone should committ suicide together

Shafia conversations show little remorse, lots of rage

[...]
Hamed chipped in with the bottom line: "The important thing is that they are away from these friends and stay away from such friends."

The wiretaps also reveal the breadth of the strange dysfunction of this family, who physically left Afghanistan in 1992 and lived abroad for years before coming to Canada in 2007, but who spiritually never really left Kabul far behind.

The day before the trio were arrested, one of the siblings phoned Hamed about 3 a.m. one morning.

In that whispered, desperate conversation, Hamed tried to tell the other children that the end might be approaching.

The sibling's answer? "If nothing happens, the best thing is everyone suicide."

http://www.windsorstar.com/news/cana...#ixzz1dtGWWFWX



Those younger ones that werent even there seem to have known more then what I really thought they did

[VXIII]

I agree @Whisper, seems the entire family knew and it appears as though the Parents and hamed are using this as a warning as well as a threat to keep the kids in line, thats so evil, can you imagine living under that knowledge and threat that this may happen to them if they decide to watch TV... Thanks again for all your research on this case and updating daily (as well as several other cases you update) ... I know everyone following this case appreciates it greatly...

One thing I havent heard yet is curses and name calling against Rona in the tapes, Shafia calls his daughters whores, prostitutes and disgraceful, but Rona, seems like she was merely murdered to get rid of her, as an inconvenience Or maybe to keep her from turning them in, Dont think she would have been able to not go to police... From all reports about her she loved those girls deeply...

[Whisper]

Still waiting for updates from today nothing released yet

Immovable suspect keen to see photos of dead sisters
Read more: http://www.windsorstar.com/Immovable...#ixzz1duzwzYNz
More of the brother asking stupid questions while being interrogated


Hamed Shafia denied being at death scene, videotape shows
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/...#ixzz1dv0eO0xU

'I would do it again 100 times': Muslim father 'murdered his THREE daughters in honour killing for dating wrong boys'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz1dv2O8Yo7

[Whisper]

The family was returning from a trip to Niagara Falls when it ended up in the canal and all the victims were found to have drowned.
However, prosecutors don't know if it was in the canal or elsewhere. Three of them had bruising to the back of their heads.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz1dv35ic5m


That may answer a couple questions,
I wonder if they were drowned in the motel room or someplace else and the bruising was from being held under water??

[Whisper]

K just when I think I have it brainiac speaks about chlorinated water being in the lungs
but they havent said anything
I am just guessing on how they may have been drowned then put in the car

[Whisper]

The Deadly Mindset Behind "Honour Killings
And when the girl-child buried alive is asked for what sin she was killed. (Quran 81:8)"

This verse from the Quran seems to be the most appropriate for this story. A man, along with his (second) wife and son, stands accused of orchestrating the murders of his three daughters and a first wife (who could not bear children, hence the second wife).

In the early hours of June 30, 2009, a woman of Afghan background dared to do the unthinkable: learn how to drive. You know what I'm talking about: the moment for most young people when they finally get to be in control of something that's for all intents and purposes a big deal, for once in their life.

This is not a story from Kabul, Afghanistan where the family originates. This is a story from Kingston, Ontario -- home to the Royal Military College campus, Canadian Forces Base Kingston and even the Kingston Penitentiary that may well become the new home of the family members accused in this alleged case of honour killings in Canada.

Evidence in this case is still emerging as the trial continues, but quite a bit of information (not evidence) is already available through the initial coverage of this case in mid 2009. The Crown's allegation is that the father had begun to perceive the liberal attitudes taken by four women constituted an egregious display of immorality and as such, warranted their death. Keep in mind, he had been in Canada for a whole two years, having come from a place, which is for all intents and purposes, a failing state.

Recently, we have heard allegations in court that the father, in collaboration and conspiracy with the mother and son, orchestrated this killing to reclaim this supposed lost honour by having young girls who might have become rebellious.

"What will people say" is another major problem in such a mindset: If someone in the community just whispers that the girls have done something wrong (to us it would be small, to this mindset, anything is a trigger: Facebook, text messaging, you name it), they are guilty until proven innocent. Was this proof for the father that the girls had been corrupted by the West? Generally speaking, learning to drive would only give them the opportunity to have free sex, which surely would be the next step (is how the thinking goes in this Old World mentality). This is why women are practically locked up so as to "save" them from themselves (yes, it's always her fault).

Honour killings are not exclusive to Muslims; hardline Sikhs, Hindus and Christian Arabs are notorious for them also for not cooperating with arranged marriages or otherwise exerting inklings of feminine self. The overwhelming majority of honour killings and FGM that occur in Muslim societies do so in the harsh and austere environments, which constitutes much of the geography of places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East and North Africa. This if of course, not to say, "the desert made 'em do it" but to note the environment in which the Quranic verse was first revealed and the kind of mindsets it tries to correct.

Girls being buried alive still happens in India (mostly Hindus) due to male gender preference (to do the farming of course) and modern female infanticide is manifested by using ultrasound to find out gender early so that if it's a girl, the fetus can be aborted (China). I would qualify this as another form of "honour killing" not because I believe conception equals life (I do not), but ending the life of a female child because of gender or imagined immorality that supposedly comes with it.

This anti-female child attitude is condemned in another verse also:
When news is brought to one of them, of (the birth of) a female (child), his face darkens, and he is filled with inward grief! With shame does he hide himself from his people, because of the bad news he has had! Shall he retain it on contempt, or bury it in the dust? Ah! what an evil (choice) they decide on? (16:57-58)

In the end, child or adult femalicide (yes, it's a real word) is among the pre-Islamic practices that are expressly prohibited, lacking honour completely and subject to findings of guilt by God.[...]

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/mubin-s...b_1028380.html

[Rockin Ma]

hardline Sikhs

Well that's surprising news I will need to follow up on.

[Whisper]

well that's surprising news i will need to follow up on.

they are fucking barbaRians the way they think

[Whisper]

The young Montreal man accused of killing three of his sisters and his stepmother, in a conspiracy with his mother and father, insisted, during a four-hour police interrogation, that he was never at the canal where the victims were found dead in a submerged car. Hamed Shafia, now 20, held to the denial, even when confronted with the fact that his mother had told police, in a separate interrogation, that the three were present when the family’s Nissan Sentra plunged into the water.
Hamed Shafia is interrogated on July 22, 2009, by Kingston police officer Steve Koopman. The interrogation was videotaped. (screen capture from released exhibit)
“It’s impossible, you’re making it up,” Hamed said, when Sgt. Michael Boyles, the Kingston Police officer questioning him, told him what his mother had said. A videotape of the interrogation by Boyles, and another officer, was played for jurors Tuesday at the murder trial.

[...]
Hamed told the officer he didn’t believe his mother would say all three were at the scene.

“Well, if she was there, I don’t know, but I wasn’t,” he said.
“She said you were there,” Boyles responded.
Uh, that’s impossible,” Hamed said.
Prosecutors allege that the three family members were involved in taking their two vehicles to the canal at around 1:30 in the morning on June 30 and using their SUV to push the smaller car, containing the four victims, over a stone ledge into the water.

Boyles brought a laptop computer into the interview room and played a portion of the videotaped interrogation of Hamed’s mother.

After Hamed watched his mother’s incriminating statement, Boyles told him that his mother told them what happened “because it’s the right thing to do.”
Hamed appeared surprised by what he had seen.

So is your mother lying?” Boyles asked.

“I don’t know … speak to the lawyer,” Hamed mumbled.

Earlier, another officer, Det. Steve Koopman appeared to come close to wresting admissions from the young man.

“Did your dad always have this [murder] plan in effect in regards to the Kingston Mills area?” Koopman asked.

“No,” Hamed replied.

“OK. When did it get brought up to you?”
“No, he didn’t, he didn’t bring it up to me,” Hamed said. When Koopman asked how the two family cars ended up at the canal, Hamed changed the subject.

“Is my mom in one of the cells?” he asked the officer.

In another segment, Koopman gently suggests that Hamed is less culpable than his father.

“Did you mean to get involved in this?” Koopman asked.
“No,” Hamed responded.

“When did it start for you?”
Hamed refused to answer the officer’s next few questions and he seemed intent on absolving his mother of blame.
“My mom, she doesn’t … have anything to do with it,” he said.

When the officer asked how his mother was doing, Hamed said “she did talk about suicide.”

During the interrogation, officers also revealed to Hamed that cellphone records showed that his phone was in the Kingston area three days before the victims were found, at a time when he had already said he was in Niagara Falls with his family on a vacation.

“I don’t know; I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hamed replied, when asked why his phone was using a cell tower in the Kingston area.
The young man is withdrawn and uncommunicative through large stretches of the interrogation, but at other times he engages with the police officers and quizzes them about what evidence they have collected to implicate the family.

Koopman tried to show empathy, telling Hamed he knew it was a scary experience.

“But I think you’re doing a dishonour to yourself and you’re doing a dishonour to your family when you’re gonna lie about what your responsibility is,” the officer said.
“How much I knew, I told you and if you want me to start lying, then that’s a different story, you know, anyway, I have nothing left in my life you know,” Hamed responds. “It’s like, God forbid for any family but uh, four members suddenly just disappear, like gone.”

Prosecutors allege the victims died in an honour killing, an ancient cultural practice that is still prevalent in some South Asian and Middle Eastern cultures in which girls and women can be murdered if they are perceived to have shamed a family through immoral behaviour or misconduct.
The Shafia family, originally from Afghanistan, came to Canada in 2007 from Dubai and settled in St. Leonard
[..]

http://www.cancrime.com/2011/11/17/i...g-told-police/

[VXIII]

So, it appears they most likely drowned them in a pool or hot tub first because of the chorine in their lungs? Mr. Shafia stated :

EVEN IF THEY HOIST ME UP ONTO THE GALLOWS, NOTHING IS MORE DEAR TO ME THAN MY HONOUR.
LET'S LEAVE OUR DESTINY TO GOD AND MAY GOD NEVER MAKE ME, YOU OR YOUR MOTHER HONOURLESS."

Do ya think you might have lost your precious honor when you murdered your first wife and children dumbfucks?

and:

"Even if, God forbid, they hoist us onto the gallows ... we accept it wholeheartedly,"

Wonder is Toobastupa and Hamed feel the same way

Think he will still feel the same way and do it 100 times over

I say to myself, ‘You did well. Would they come back to life a hundred times, for you to do the same again.’

He doesnt even feel any remorse that sTooba and Hamed are also going to suffer the same fate... Wonder if it ever crossed Stoobias mind "hey, if he is killing Rona, what will he do to me when I become old and cant have babies anymore"...

Dont know if Canada hangs people but if they do, give this man the short drop (the really short one where your toes are just inches from the ground) and make him die slowly, let his feet touch the ground too a few times and hoist him up again since he says hed do it 100 times over... The murders of Rona, Zainab and Safar are reprehensible enough without killing young Geeti, that just gets to me and keeps me awake at night she was a 13 year old child and she knew what was coming... what bad could she have done?

P.S. Maybe its not being reported on but I dont see any isnlamic protesters rushing to their aid...

[Whisper]

So, it appears they most likely drowned them in a pool or hot tub first because of the chorine in their lungs?

No they havent said that yet
I said the othernight to my husband that maybe they were drowned before they were put in the car b/c they died by drowning and have bruising to the back of the head/neck
So I thought maybe from being held down when Shafia was pissed off
I can see him angrily doing it

But my husband said it would be chlorinated watrer in the lungs then so thats what Im waiting for
B/c Shafia wouldnt think of that hes a fucking neaderthal,cant see him drowing them in a lake first

[Whisper]

Shafia trial hears recording by 'translator' turned investigator

KINGSTON, Ont. — The wonder is that Moosa Hadi managed to get to and from the witness stand without injury from the weight of the axe he has to grind.
Hadi is the self-appointed "investigator" who first offered his services as a translator to the defence team representing Mohammad Shafia, Tooba Mohammad Yahya and their eldest son Hamed after their arrests in the drowning deaths of four of their family members made headlines about two years ago.
[...]
Shortly after being hired, however, and without the lawyers' knowledge, Hadi had morphed into the Afghan version of the fictional French detective Inspector Jacques Clouseau, the bumbling character famously played by the late Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther series.
If he was a not entirely unreasonable choice as a translator — like the Shafia parents, Hadi was born in Afghanistan and like them, speaks Farsi — only a film director with a sly sense of humour, like Blake Edwards, would have drafted him as a detective.
Hadi, now about 30, was at the time a second-year mining engineering student. He has had no training in investigations and, as his testimony revealed, no clue how to conduct one. He's also a bit of an odd duck, prickly and terribly serious about his investigative duties, and with a bewildering self-confidence.
Though Peter Kemp and David Crowe, who respectively represent the 58-year-old Shafia and the 41-year-old Yahya, hired Hadi, it was purely as a translator.
He didn't tell them what he was doing in his investigation, though Kemp, the lawyer who seems to have been most involved with him, might have put his mind to why a simple translator, let alone this one, needed to have every lick of evidence in the case.
In any case, Hadi duly signed confidentiality agreements with the two lawyers and then proceeded to blithely ignore them. He cheerily nodded in agreement when Crowe in cross-examination said mildly, "You decided the search for the truth was more important?"
Having received a hard drive of Crown disclosure — which included all the evidence Kingston Police had obtained against the trio to that point, including wiretaps and witness interviews — Hadi then got for himself special "professional visit" status at the Quinte Detention Centre, where Shafia and Hamed were being held.
He duly visited Shafia, immediately pronounced him a deeply religious man who was wholly innocent, and the two struck a deal that Hadi would "investigate about the case" for which he was paid a total of $4,500.
In other words, on one level, he was working for Kemp and Crowe, as a translator. On another, unknown to the two lawyers, he was working for Shafia and blossoming into Insp. Clouseau — visiting the scene at the Kingston Mills locks; meeting and talking to the family's surviving children ("I told them that yes, your parents are absolutely innocent"); once even travelling with a Shafia family relative, who was also his friend, to Toronto.
He was convinced, he said, that if anyone was hiding anything, it was Hamed, though Hadi was clear he knew straight off he was not the murderous "kind of guy."
Since first reporting their relatives "missing," the parents and son, now 20, had stuck ferociously to the story that the deaths must have been a terrible accident, likely caused when Zainab, their headstrong 19-year-old daughter, took the car out for a spin with her sisters, Sahar and Geeti, then 17 and 13, and their father's first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, along for the ride.
But police had discovered pieces of a headlight from the family Lexus at the scene, though the accused threesome insisted neither they nor that car had ever been there; Hamed had reported an "accident" with the car, with a pole in a near-empty parking lot, the next morning in Montreal.
Back to Hadi, who got the disclosure on Oct. 6, 2009.

Exactly a month later, on Nov. 6, he went over it with Hamed at the detention centre, and by God if Hamed didn't make a clean breast of it that very night in a story which, as Hadi inimitably put it, "was matching all existing evidences."
The next day, Hadi returned to the detention centre to record the story.
It was that recording, with Hadi in the stand, that Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Maranger and the jurors heard Friday.
In the revised version, Hamed said the women had been talking about going for a spin to find an open gas station, and after urging them not to go, they went out in the Nissan anyway, and he decided to follow them, always intending to safely see them back to the motel where they were staying.
But they got lost, he was following too closely, and hit the Nissan, shattering the headlight. As he got out to inspect the damage, the tragic accident happened — he heard a splash and saw the Nissan in the water.
His efforts to help them consisted of tooting the horn once and dangling a rope in the water. He told Hadi he was too scared to tell his parents (his father would swear and be upset, he said) or call the police (they would blame him for letting Zainab drive without a licence), so he did what any boy in that dire circumstance would do — he left his sisters in the water and drove to Montreal, where, the next morning, he staged the accident in the parking lot to account for the damage to the Lexus.
Toward the end of the audio recording, Hadi, who listened to the sound of his own voice with delight, said to Hamed, "if I didn't get involved in this, how long do you think (it would have been until) you would hold the truth?"
"OK," Hadi pronounced, "for now, you are not guilty in my eyes, I mean not guilty of murder." His transition from detective to judge was complete.

That was Nov. 7, 2009. Five days later, he sent police the audio of the interview and the first of two "reports" he also wrote on his investigation.
It is of some comfort that Hadi is now working in Thompson, Man., where the temperature is about -18 C.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/...029/story.html

what a clown

[Whisper]

Romeo-and-Juliet marriage lasted one day, ‘honour killings’ trial told
Nov 21 2011

In poignant testimony that went to the heart of the prosecution case against three people accused of committing multiple “honour killings,” the former boyfriend of one of the victims told of a clandestine, Romeo-and-Juliet romance and a marriage in Montreal that lasted just one day – destroyed by her parents’ disapproval.
The witness, whose name is under a temporary publication ban, told the murder trial of Afghan-Canadian businessman Mohammad Shafia, 58, his second wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, and their 20-year-old son Hamed that he first began courting the couple’s eldest daughter, Zainab, in February, 2008.

And it was evident from the outset, he said, that Hamed and the parents were implacably opposed to the relationship.

He recounted an e-mail he received from Zainab in which she warned him to beware of her brother.

[...]

In earlier evidence Monday, the jury saw revealing photographs of the two oldest sisters, scantily clad in lingerie and swimsuits, found on their cellphones after their bodies were discovered. Pictures of their boyfriends were also discovered, and printed copies of some of the photos were later found among the property of the accused – in the Lexus and in a suitcase belonging to Hamed Shafia.

All four women drowned, autopsies showed, but where and when has never been clear. Three of the victims had fresh bruises on their heads, and one of the car windows was wide open, leading police to believe they were dead before the Nissan plunged into the water.
Zainab’s former boyfriend told the trial Monday he and she were high-school sweethearts and that their relationship was under pressure from the beginning from her family, who disapproved of his social standing and Pakistani heritage.

He once visited her at her Montreal family home, he told the trial, but had to be hustled out to the garage when her brother Hamed unexpectedly showed up.

But Hamed found him lurking there and sent him away. After that, Zainab was not allowed to leave the house, even to attend school, for months.

She and the boyfriend nonetheless stayed in touch, and finally in April, 2009, he helped Zainab move to a women’s shelter in Montreal. She stayed there for two weeks but was persuaded by her mother, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, to move back home, on the day that her father returned to Canada from one of his many business trips abroad.

Seemingly the mother was now on her daughter’s side, and in May, 2009 – five weeks before the four victims perished – the two young people took Islamic wedding vows in a Montreal mosque.

But the wedding was never registered with Quebec authorities, and one day later, during what was supposed to be a celebration in a restaurant, it was dissolved by the same imam who had performed it. This was done by Zainab’s husband pronouncing, “I divorce you” three times.

The marriage ended because no one from the groom’s family showed up, the former boyfriend told the trial, and his new wife’s family had reverted to their former hostility.

Zainab was heartbroken, he said, and he recounted her tearfully telling him why she had to change her mind: “I cannot do this. I cannot leave my family and ruin their reputation.”

Two weeks later, she sent him another clandestine, abbreviation-filled e-mail, in which she wrote: “One thing that I’m really happy about is that it was my dream to marry u n I did it … we had an amazing love story together … ur wife and best friend Zainab.”

The Shafias have three other children, who were placed in care after their parents’ arrest. All seven siblings were the biological children of Tooba Mohammad Yahya.

The witness will be cross-examined by the defence when the trial resumes Tuesday morning.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...7/?from=sec431

[Whisper]

Valentine prompted friendship rules, Shafia trial hears

KINGSTON, ONT. - A young man told court Monday how he sent Zainab Shafia a Valentine’s Day card at high school in 2008 -- and got the "rules of friendship" along with a thank you in response.

The rules outlined how to avoid the scrutiny of her younger brother, Hamed.
[,,,]

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/11/21...ia-trial-hears