Did Canadian honor killing end in death of 4 women?

[Tundratot]

Tell us what you think, @Whisper. Hmm-Huh! Amen to that!

[Whisper]

Tell us what you think, @Whisper. Hmm-Huh! Amen to that!

lol ty I just as it goes on I get more and more pissed at how he thought he was really going to play us and pull one fucking over and now we are paying for him and his fucked up family with our taxs

Hes supposebly a millionaire,I hope to god they take back every cent from him that is being paid out for the trial and stuff but also food and lodgings in the jails


This is Christie Blatchford: column from lastnights paper I love her she takes the whole days proceedings and puts it like it is

Christie Blatchford: Fear kept alleged honour killing victims imprisoned in misery

KINGSTON, Ont. — What a wretched tale of misery is unfolding at the Shafia family murder trial here.
Whatever verdicts the Ontario Superior Court jury ultimately reaches, what is virtually undeniable is that this household functioned like a mini totalitarian state, where everyone walked on eggshells or outright lived in fear and where intimates were turned against and snitched on one another to the power-holders.
Smack in the middle of one of Canada’s most proudly cosmopolitan cities — Montreal, where they lived — this family of Afghan immigrants was still imprisoned in their homeland’s archaic culture.
The boys of the family were spying on the girls, looking for signs of loose Western behaviour; the older girls were so desperate for a way out they agreed to marry virtually any boy who looked at them twice; the two wives, quietly living in an illegal and secret polygamous marriage, were at one another’s throats, with the fertile one lording it over the older, barren one.
[...]
Tuesday, the jurors and Judge Robert Maranger heard from Afghan women’s rights activist Fahima Vorgetts that Ms. Amir wanted out.
“But she was afraid,” said Ms. Vorgetts, who spoke to Ms. Amir two or three times a week by phone during the last year of her life.
“She said if she leaves, or goes to the police, her husband will kill her” or “send her back to Afghanistan.”
A resident of Virginia, Ms. Vorgetts, who still visits Afghanistan to work with women there twice a year, first heard from Ms. Amir hrough a mutual relative.
Almost every time she called,” she said, “she would be crying.” She complained about her humiliation at Ms. Yahya’s hands, the utter lack of control she had over even her own passport, the cruelty by Mr. Shafia.
Ms. Vorgetts gave her the same advice she gives other women — “leave the situation, leave the house” — and told her, “You’re in a Western country: There are shelters, police who protect you, or a church.”
But Ms. Amir, she said, was too afraid; she took the threats seriously.
It was also the culture,” Ms. Vorgetts said. “She would taint the family name [by leaving]… a divorced woman would be looked down on, especially at that age.”
Though Ms. Amir was in Canada only on a series of temporary visitor’s visas — the lone member of the family to be in that tenuous spot — she held some real cards in this battle, but may never have realized it.
If Canadian immigration authorities had discovered she was wife No. 1, and not the cousin her husband had pretended to officials when the family moved here in 2007, the whole Shafia clan might have been in the soup.
Certainly, a Montreal immigration lawyer testified Tuesday, their status as permanent residents would have been in jeopardy and possibly withdrawn, though a government moratorium against deporting Afghans to their homeland would have meant the Shafias wouldn’t have been removed. They could have applied as refugees.
On May 1 of 2009, Ms. Vorgetts headed to Afghanistan; when she returned in June, though Ms. Amir had left several messages (“she sounded like she was in big trouble and really needed big help”). She never heard from her again.
The family, as the jurors have heard, were by late June on a trip to Niagara Falls; it was this trip that ended with the four bodies being discovered in the canal, and, about a month later, with the trio being arrested.
Almost daily, there is testimony from witnesses about the repressive Afghan culture in general and how it was enforced at the Shafia home.
One of Ms. Amir’s sisters, Diba Abdali Masoomi, said she knew of her sister’s plight, and reminded her, when she reported threats from Mr. Shafia, “in Afghanistan anything can happen … but this is a developed country.” Ms. Masoomi also said that Ms. Amir had also told her how Hamed had once disciplined one of the boys and how the boy had said, “My father has the right to hit me, but who are you to hit me?”
Another time, asked how, if her sister was so under her husband’s thumb she had so much gold jewellery, Ms. Masoomi said, “I am an Afghan lady. I have one box of jewellery; it is our custom.”
The day’s final witness was a young boyfriend of Sahar’s, a shy, even grave, fellow of 23.
An immigrant who just arrived in Montreal in 2008, he isn’t Afghan, and doesn’t speak Dari, so the two spoke French (hers was good, he was learning) and she learned a little of his language. (His name is protected by a temporary publication ban.) They dated for only four months, but were planning to marry, he said.
Most of their dates consisted of having lunch during her school day. Once, they were hugging when one of her relatives walked into the restaurant: At Sahar’s insistence, the young man said, they sprang apart, and he pretended to be another girl’s boyfriend.
When the Shafias went away on their trip, they managed a few phone calls, and he sent her a couple of besotted texts in his first language, which Sahar understood only a little.
In her last text, sent the night she died, she told him they were about three hours away from Montreal, and were going to stop at a Kingston motel.
When she stopped answering his texts, the young man called her 22 times in the next 17 hours. All went to voice mail.
Part of what he wrote in a text a week earlier were these lines: “The world is very large, it’s so large that one day I could even lose you. But in this world, as large as it is, know there’s a small heart, and you can never get lost in that heart, because it’s only for you, my love.”
If Sahar couldn’t read every word, perhaps she recognized the love and sweetness there, and took comfort

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...ned-in-misery/

Ronas sister,Diba Adaili Masoomi

[Whisper]

‘Honour’ violence: a crime against humanity

The Shafia family murder trial in Kingston, where the Crown is now wrapping up its case, has become a lightning rod for heated cultural discussions. It’s been depicted as a multicult horror story, a family soap opera, a feminist morality tale, and an anatomy of a mass killing, all rolled into one.
[...]
know people who couldn’t bear to read a word of the heartbreaking and enraging narrative that emerged in court about an allegedly tyrannical and polygamous father, his coldly complicit second wife, their feisty and unhappy teenage daughters desperate for help, and the turmoil and abuse that ruled this Afghan-Canadian family in which the brothers acted as enforcers.
[...]
We’ve come to know such intimate and tender things about these girls and women, their belly button studs, their purple nail polish, the lushly romantic texts their forbidden boyfriends sent (“I want only you to be the owner of my heart”). I’ve become especially moved by Sahar – her choice of boyfriend, her spirit, her clear sense of danger – to the point where, when I remind myself how she died, I am shocked all over again.
So-called honour killings are a crime against nature, against humanity, against family love and, above all, against females.
But what could have led to an intervention in what was clearly a deteriorating home situation, where, according to testimony, the young women were ostracized, threatened and physically abused?
Certainly, lots of media and experts have laid blame: It was the soft squishy centre of multiculturalism that did them in, some argue, with child welfare officers and teachers accepting that, because of their cultural values, things were bound to be different at home.
We don’t expect or demand strongly enough, said one social worker interviewed on the CBC, that immigrant families conform to “Canadian” ways of behaviour – although these Shafia girls were very Canadian in their teenage rebellion, all about the clothes, the makeup, the boyfriends and the bad marks.
In our country, people say, women don’t risk death by acting out. But that’s not quite true, is it? Many women here, not from “honour societies,” have been killed by husbands and partners for dressing provocatively or daring to seek romantic or sexual pleasure elsewhere. That’s why Constance Backhouse, a feminist historian at the University of Ottawa, prefers to use the term “femicide” to describe what is on trial here. As she bravely wrote in an e-mail, “I think our culture has just as bad a record.”
ut surely the difference is that we now loudly condemn violence against women, ostracize the perpetrators, that we’ve come a long way in inculcating in our society the belief that women – just because they are women – are not the property of men.
The problem is that some members of certain ethnic societies simply do not accept that women are equal to men, and the result is deadly. The UN reports that 5,000 females a year are victims of honour killings. These girls and women are annihilated in the name of family, religion, as a cultural prerogative, and because there is some support within their community for what, in one gruesome phrase, is called “washing shame with blood.” Those convicted of such killings may become tacit heroes in their communities.
Many, if not most, Afghans, Pakistanis and Kurds, to name three ethnic groups that have been identified with honour violence, and the majority in any other ethnic group, do not believe in, carry out, or support these killings.
And reading the riot act at our borders – “Hey, you do know that killing your daughters because they are dressing and behaving, as you say, like ‘whores,’ is wrong, don’t you? We don’t even call women whores here!” – is obviously not going to work.
Muslim activist and author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who started a foundation to combat honour violence, has argued in the Huffington Post that police and service providers should both receive and provide special training around these killings.
The other issue, she writes, is “bad choices of dialogue partners” – traditional community leaders speaking on behalf of an entire group who not only deny what is going on, but seek to “disempower” moderate and feminist representatives among them.
[...]
What eventually stops honour violence or any other violence against women is the insistence on this simple belief all over the world.
And yes, feminism still matters, has never mattered more. It changed the way Western men view and treat women, and one day, it will be responsible for those changes around the world.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/...rticle2257290/

Shafia trial: relative told teen feared parents

KINGSTON, Ont. - Sahar Shafia told her boyfriend's aunt she believed her parents would kill her if they found out about her relationship with the young man from Honduras but she planned to tell them about it because she would love him ``until death,'' the murder trial of her parents and brother heard.
``She told me that her parents did not know about the relationship with Ricardo and the day that her parents knew about the relationship with Ricardo she would be a dead woman,'' Erma Medina testified Wednesday.
She said Sahar repeated the claim several times and appeared serious.
[...]
Sanchez testified they kept the relationship secret out of fear of the reaction of her family. He believed the family would not approve of the union between the Spanish-speaking Christian and the teenage Muslim girl whose family is from Afghanistan.
Sanchez lived with his aunt for a time and Sahar visited him there.
Medina last talked to Sahar in April 2009, she testified. She said Sahar told her she planned to tell her parents about Sanchez but she hoped to move to Honduras to marry him.
``They would get support and feel more secure in my country than in this country,'' Medina testified, through a Spanish interpreter, as did Sanchez. She said Sanchez's father and other relatives are in Honduras.
Medina was asked by prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis why Sahar would tell her parents about her boyfriend if she believed they would kill her. ``Because she loved Ricardo . . . and said that she would love (him) until death,'' Medina replied.
[...]
Sahar told the woman of physical abuse by her older brother Hamed, at the behest of her parents, and that she was emotionally rejected by her mother. Benayoun said Sahar told her that her mother would not speak to her and her siblings were forbidden to talk to her, as punishment for having introduced a sister to a boy.
``She said, `I want my mother to speak to me,''' Benayoun testified.
She coded the case as an emergency requiring immediate action.
Jurors already have heard that a Batshaw investigator met with Sahar and concluded that the allegations were true but the file was closed and no action was taken because Sahar was not considered to be in immediate danger.
The trial is adjourned until Monday, when Crown prosecutors will call their final witness, a professor at the University of Toronto who has studied honour killings. It is not known if defence lawyers will call any evidence after the Crown completes its case.
Prosecutors allege the victims were slain in an honour killing, purportedly orchestrated by Shafia because he believed his daughters had shamed him by taking boyfriends and dressing in revealing clothing.

http://www.canada.com/Shafia+trial+r...#ixzz1fKnDczCC

[Whisper]

I was running all over today paying bills and a bit of shopping and we have ALOT of young girls that wear the hajib here b/c of the large arabic area
But I really caught myself looking at them for bruises and checking them right out today
making sure I caught their eye and smiled at them at least b/c so many stare at the ground
This case has really caught my attention of how these girls are treated(not all) but I am going to get involved in a centre downtown here that helps these women over here called Canadian Women Working With Immigrant Women,showing them the ropes of finding jobs and independence,starting with teaching them english

EDIT; dont know what I can teach them or help them with but I can really arrange good ass kicking of men that abuse them,I have good connections in that dept

[Tundratot]

@Whisper Are you going to enlist @Pete Bondurant's little band of ass tearers?

[Whisper]

@Whisper Are you going to enlist @Pete Bondurant's little band of ass tearers?

@Tundratot
lol yes I am

[Whisper]

This is in tonights paper

What really happened

One of the most difficult tasks for Kingston Police investigating the Kingston Mills multiple murder case was determining the sequence of events that led to the deaths of four women in the early morning hours of June 30, 2009.

The three people now standing trial for first-degree murder — Mohammad Shafia, his wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, and their son, Hamed — insisted it was a case of misadventure.

They told police their eldest daughter, Zainab, had taken a car on a late-night joy ride and somehow managed to drive a winding route at the Kingston Mills locks until she and her two sisters and their father's first wife plunged over the side of the lock wall and drowned.

Early in their investigation, however, police developed the theory that the discovery of the Shafia family's black Nissan Sentra in the waters of Colonel By Lake was staged to look like an accident.

Zainab, Sahar and Geeti Shafia and 53-year-old Rona Amir Mohammad, they suspected, were victims of a family honour killing.

As the accused tell their stories, they were on their way home from a family vacation in Niagara Falls in two vehicles, when Tooba says she is too tired to continue driving.

Tooba waits in the Nissan with Geeti, Sahar, Zainab and Rona, while Hamed and Mohammad drive off to find motel rooms for the night.

It is nearly 2 a.m.

The men book into rooms 18 and 19 of the Kingston East Motel on Hwy. 15.

At this point, the stories begin to change.

Jurors in the trial have heard several variations of the events that followed, as told by the co-accused themselves in a series of interrogations and interviews beginning later that day.


As the trial prepares to hear Monday from an expert on honour killings, we recap the evidence jurors have heard about what happened on that fateful night.

•

MOHAMMAD SHAFIA

In his June 30, 2009, interview with Mohammad Shafia, Kings*ton Police Det. Geoff Dempster tried to locate exactly where he and his son, Hamed, left Tooba waiting with the family Nissan that night.

"Was it a store?" Dempster asks.

"No it was a road, not a store … on the side," Mohammad replies.

The family was on its way back home to Montreal from a vacation in Niagara Falls when they decided to stop for the night in Kingston. Mohammad says they checked into the second motel they came across on Hwy. 15.

"Yes, at the second place, and we paid the money and signed everything," he tells the detective. "My wife was with the girls, these four people."

Dempster was probing the Montreal man for information about how three of his daughters and a woman later determined to be his first wife wound up at the foot of the Kingston Mills lock, dead, inside the family's submerged Nissan Sentra.

Shafia, his wife and son are on trial at Frontenac County Court House, each charged with murdering the four women.

Jurors watching a video recording of Dempster's interview with Shafia hear how the officer wants to know how Tooba gets to the motel with the Nissan.

"We ... told her to take this road down, and she came and stopped her car," Mohammad Shafia said.

At the Kingston East Motel, Mohammad continues, "we went to our umm, the daughter went uhh, the four people went to the other room, room number 18."

That's when Hamed told his parents he was driving on to Montreal to take care of some family business. The motel manager testified that it was after 2 a.m. that the family's other car, a Lexus, left the motel parking lot and headed north on Hwy. 15 in the general direction of Kingston Mills, several kilometres away.

Dempster asks Mohammad what he remembers next.

"I woke up in the morning (and) I saw that the car is not there," he said "First I looked outside, I washed my face and went outside. I saw that the car was not there. I checked the door (to their room) and saw that nobody was there."

Mohammad purchased a phone calling card from the motel manager that morning. He tells Dempster that his first call is to Sahar, one of the daughters found dead in the submerged car. When she doesn't answer her cellphone he calls Hamed in Montreal.

Mohammad tells Dempster he has no idea what happened the night before.

"I was thinking … they had left the room."

He speculates that Zainab, another of the daughters found dead in the car, may have taken it to Montreal.

"When I called Hamed in Montreal, I asked if they had come there, Zainab and them, with Rona, and … he said no," Mohammad tells Dempster.

On the day of the Shafias' arrest on July 22, Mohammad was interrogated by RCMP Insp. Shahin Mehdizadeh.

He tells the officer that the entire family of 10 had checked into the motel.

Mehdizadeh tells him police found a witness living near Kingston Mills to prove Mohammad is lying.

At about 2 a.m., Mehdizadeh says, a person had come out to his balcony. "He couldn't sleep, he was looking around."

The officer shows Mohammad photos taken by police from a house across Colonel By Lake from the lock station where the car went into the water.

"It means when from this house, this person looks toward this side," says Mehdizadeh, "he sees this. We have reports that a person was watching, he had seen something like this: one small car and one bigger SUV."

The lights on the small car were off, but the lights on the SUV were on, Mehdizadeh says.

"After close to 20 minutes or so, they heard the sound of water. Something like that had gone (into) the water."

Mehdizadeh goes on to tell Mohammad that after the sound of water, a horn is heard, for close to 45 seconds."

Shafia sticks to the original story, saying "when they say around 2 o'clock and a few minutes, we had gone to bed at 1:30 o'clock at the motel ... my son, my wife, I, all of us were in the motel. No way nothing has been existed to cause this (to) happen."

•

TOOBA MOHAMMAD YAHYA

According to Tooba Mohammad Yahya's first interview with Kings*ton Police Det. Geoff Dempster on June 30, when the family got to Kingston, Hamed Shafia texted her saying that they would stop and find a motel.

"Me, very bad vomiting," says Tooba. "I couldn't drive so I stopped the car."

She says she doesn't know exactly where they stopped.

"When they got to the motel, they wanted to come to get me but I came myself," she explains. "When they were about to turn from the motel and come towards me, I got near them. I got the kids off, with my cousin (Rona Amir Mohammad) and husband."

According to Tooba's account, all 10 family members began moving into the two rooms at the Kingston East Motel, with daughters Zainab, Sahar, Geeti, and Rona — the four women who would end up dead — taking their own room.

"Not too long after, my older daughter came and knocked on the door and asked for the keys to pick up some clothes from the car trunk," she tells Dempster.

"After that I don't know what happened. I just slept."

The next morning, Mohammad tells her that the girls and Rona and the Nissan are missing. Tooba tells Dempster she believes Zainab took the car for a drive in the middle of the night.

"I think she thought, 'My mom and dad are asleep, let's go for a drive'," she says.

Dempster asks Tooba where she was when the car went in the water.

"No, no I wasn't there," she replies.

Tooba was interrogated by the RCMP's Shahin Mehdizadeh for more than six hours on July 22, prior to Mohammad's interrogation.

The RCMP officer asks her outright if she has killed her daughters and Rona. She denies it.

Then she repeats the story about checking into the motel and Zainab coming for the key to get her clothes from the Nissan.

The next morning, "I went to their room and saw their beds were unmade, their sleeping beds were disorganized, no one was there."

Mehdizadeh confronts her with the police theory that the Lexus was used to bump the Nissan into the water after it had gotten stuck on the edge of the lock wall.

Pointing to a photo he says, "Here is a house and we have someone who is in this house … and they heard a vehicle, a thing, fell off into the water and there was a noise too for five seconds, there was a noise of the car horn."

He also tells her about the pieces of Lexus headlight found at the lock matching pieces found in Montreal where Hamed ditched the vehicle the morning of June 30.

Mehdizadeh wants to know who was driving the Lexus that night at Kingston Mills. Tooba insists it was Mohammad. She also agrees that the vehicle was at the scene.

After further questioning she insists again that both vehicles went to the motel.

Then there is a change.

Tooba places both the vehicles at Kingston Mills that night and talks about Mohammad coming to sit in the Nissan while she goes to the Lexus to sleep.

"I went to a deep sleep … because I had driven for four hours and was sick, too, and taking medication," she tells the interrogator. "The next time I woke up was morning."

"Then who took you from the Lexus to the hotel?" Mehdizadeh asks.

"Oh, excuse me; excuse me, when I woke up, you are right. I made a mistake," Tooba says. "When I woke up and went … to the motel that they had rented … then I got my luggage and went inside."

Tooba also reveals that, several days earlier, the family had driven through Kingston Mills on the way to Niagara Falls so the children could use the washroom.

"We went down and crossed to the other side. We went to the other side looking for a toilet," Tooba says.

Then she describes waiting at Kingston Mills the night of June 30 while the two men go to search for a motel.

Zainab, she says, wanted to use the toilet — and all of them were awake, including Sahar, Geeti and Rona.

"Since it was dark, she got scared," Tooba recalls. "She was scared and said, 'No, I don't want to go. Wait till dad comes.' "

Mehdizadeh says he can't believe that the four women would just sit in the car as it fell into the canal without trying to escape.

Tooba insists that "if I was awake and they were pressing and putting them into the water, I might have known it … I would have been shaken or would have heard a sound of splashing or something, but believe me, I don't know nothing about the detail of this story, how it has happened."

Then another revelation from Tooba.

"I know this much that Shafia brought them here," Tooba says, looking at a photo of the locks provided by Mehdizadeh.

"I know because we changed, we changed the car."

She says that she and Hamed were standing at the side of the road by the Lexus, in the dark, when they heard a sound.

"We both ran and we saw that a car was in the water. This car has fallen into the water," she says.

Tooba's reaction?

"I screamed and fell down. I didn't understand … what happened to this car. Just when I realized that this went into the water, I screamed and fell down. I screamed and fell down so I became unconscious."

She says that when she got to the motel later, "I was still not thinking that the girls had been fallen into the water. I thought that their dad had already taken them."

As the interrogation continues, Tooba insists she did not see the Lexus push the Nissan into the water. Mehdizadeh asks what the girls were doing as they went into the water.

"How do I know that?" Tooba replies. "In the darkness, it was as dark as the grave over there."

The next day, Tooba told police she was withdrawing everything she said during the interrogation.

•

HAMED SHAFIA

Hamed was also interviewed by Kingston Police on June 30 then interrogated on July 22, the arrest day.

Much of his story on June 30 revolved around his insisting that, shortly after the family checked into the Kingston East Motel, he left for Montreal so he could use his laptop computer to do some urgent business.

As jurors watch the videotape, Kings*ton Police Det. Geoff Dempster says that he believes Hamed Shafia has more information about his sisters' deaths than he is telling.

"Yeah, but I'm telling the truth here," Hamed insists.

On July 22, he undergoes a four-hour interrogation by two Kingston Police detectives who accuse him and his parents of conspiring to murder the four women.

Police at that time thought they might be able to view video footage from a transport ministry camera at Hwys. 15 and 401. They ask Hamed if it would show him or his father driving the Nissan the morning of June 30.

"It's either gonna show Zainab or Sahar," says Hamed.

When told that, during her interrogation, his mother had just placed all of them at Kingston Mills, Hamed replies: "I don't believe that my mom says this."

In November 2009, police received drastically different information about the events of June 30.

Hamed was recorded at Quinte Detention Centre talking about how he was at the side of the locks as he watched the Nissan sink beneath the water.

In the audio recording, presented at trial two weeks ago, Hamed says that Zainab wanted to go driving in the Nissan and that he followed the four women in the Lexus as they left the motel parking lot and headed north on Hwy. 15.

Arriving at a gas station at Code's Corners, he says Zainab then drove west on Kingston Mills Road.

At the mills, he accidentally bumps into the Nissan from behind. While picking up pieces of headlight on the road, the Nissan drives onto the grass at the lock station.

Then, in the dark, he hears a splash.

That's when he runs to the edge and sees the submerged car.

He runs back to the Lexus and blows the horn as a signal for help.

Then he gets a yellow rope from the back of his vehicle and dangles it in the water.

When there is no response from anyone in the water, he gets back in the Lexus and heads to Montreal as he had originally planned — without calling police or telling his parents what had happened[..].

http://www.thewhig.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3392175

[Tundratot]

So not true. Those women would have tried to escape if they had been in the car -- conscious -- when it was either accidentally pushed or just inadvertently rolled into the lock. And, no simple roll would have put it there.

They had to be either knocked out, or under enough duress to be too afraid to even try to escape.

[Whisper]

Crown calls final witness in Shafia murder trial

On Monday, Crown prosecutors called what is expected to be their final witness in a high-profile murder trial involving the deaths of four women from the same Montreal family.
The first-degree murder trial of Mohammad Shafia, his second wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, and their adult son, Hamed Shafia, began in a Kingston, Ont., court in October.
[...]
The Crown's final witness is an expert on honour crimes, a choice CTV's Genevieve Beauchemin said was related to the prosecution's belief that family honour was the motive for the killings.
"The reason that they are talking so much about honour crimes is the Crown has alleged that this case hinges on an honour killing," Beauchemin reported from Kingston.
According to the Crown, the four victims were perceived to have dishonoured their family "by having boyfriends, by dressing more provocatively, by being more rebellious in some way," Beauchemin said.
During the trial, jurors have been hearing about Mohammad Shafia's personal belief that his family honour was of paramount importance to him.
On a wiretap recording played previously in court, Shafia is heard saying that nothing is more important to him than his honour.

http://montreal.ctv.ca/servlet/an/lo...b=MontrealHome

Family honour sometimes trumps human life, expert tells Shafia trial

KINGSTON, Ont. — After a dizzying parade of nearly 50 witnesses in 25 days, jurors in the Shafia honour killing trial heard one final prosecution witness Monday — an academic who testified that in some cultures, family honour is considered more important than human life.
"A rumour could cause the killing of a young woman," testified Shahrzad Mojab, a native of Iran who is a professor at the University of Toronto. The judge accepted her as an expert on honour killings and related issues of culture, religion, patriarchy and violence in Middle Eastern and South Asian societies and in immigrant diasporas in western nations.

Mojab has been studying these issues for more than 15 years, edited a book on honour killing, has written dozens of research papers and has attended dozens of conferences and seminars. She has provided advice to the United Nations and, last year, she explained the concept of honour killing at a conference of Toronto Police homicide investigators.
[...]
Prosecutors allege that the murders were orchestrated because the teenage sisters dressed provocatively, took boyfriends, disobeyed their father and, in the case of Zainab, ran away from home to be with a young man of her choosing. Jurors heard that Rona Mohammad complained of abuse and wanted a divorce.
Mojab was not asked to comment on the facts of the Shafia case. She explained the concept of honour killing and the motivations of perpetrators.
"The shedding of the blood is a way of purifying the name of the family . . . and restoration of the honour of the family," Mojab told the seven women and five men on the jury.
She said that in traditional, patriarchal families, the chastity, virginity and obedience of girls and women is vital to the maintenance of family honour. Men, who have power in the families, control women's bodies and have exclusive access to them. If a woman dresses immodestly or consorts with other men, or is believed to have done those things, she may be perceived to have shamed the patriarch and may be marked for death.
"There are cases that female members of the family and, in particular mothers, participate by different means in the . . . planning or (are) directly involved in the act of the killing," Mojab testified.
She said the conspiracy among family members is a characteristic that distinguishes honour killings from domestic violence. She said honour killing is an ancient cultural practice among Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Christians.
"It doesn't have any direct connection with religion at all," she said, characterizing it as a means for men to maintain the gender inequality which affords them a privileged position in families and society.
Mojab said that in many cases she has studied, perpetrators who murder their children claim that they loved them but say that their deaths were necessary because they restored the honour of the family and the honour of the child who transgressed.
"It is (considered) part of the continuum of love and care," Mojab testified.
She said some immigrants don't shed these strict views when they move to new countries. Instead, they "freeze" their concept of their home culture at the moment in time when they left their native country and resist integration in a new home by clinging to old beliefs.
Defence lawyer Peter Kemp, who represents Shafia, asked Mojab if the shame of a family would not be purified if an honour killer denied committing the murder.that's often the initial reaction," she replied. "But then there are many cases that, even after the father is imprisoned, they acknowledge that the act that was committed was to purify the name of the family."
In answer to another question, Mojab said an honour killing would still be considered to have cleansed the family's shame, even if the death was disguised as an accident.
The trial was adjourned until Thursday, when it is expected that Mohammad Shafia will testify as the defence begins presenting evidence.
Jurors were told the case is likely to extend into January.

http://www.canada.com/news/Family+ho...#ixzz1fiTv89RR

[Tundratot]

Mojab said that in many cases she has studied, perpetrators who murder their children claim that they loved them but say that their deaths were necessary because they restored the honour of the family and the honour of the child who transgressed.

If it also cleansed the child, then why was Shafia still so freaking angry at them? He should have been all about how wonderful they were and how their memories would be forever cherished. Don't you think?

Defence lawyer Peter Kemp, who represents Shafia, asked Mojab if the shame of a family would not be purified if an honour killer denied committing the murder.

This is poorly worded, I'd say. I think he's asking if the family that denies conducting an honor killing is perhaps tainting the purpose? E.g., is honor restored if the family denies responsibility for the killing?

"But then there are many cases that, even after the father is imprisoned, they acknowledge that the act that was committed was to purify the name of the family."
In answer to another question, Mojab said an honour killing would still be considered to have cleansed the family's shame, even if the death was disguised as an accident.

So, she's saying that a convicted father who is imprisoned for an honor killing will admit to it after the prison sentence is imposed? But not before? And that lying is culturally sanctioned to protect families from the lawful consequences of a culturally sanctioned practice? Why or how did a law against a practice that everyone supports get enacted? Is the Koran so flexible about lies?

[Whisper]

really good video here

http://en.video.canoe.tv/archive/sha.../1311824881001


the defence has asked for a 2 day break before they start their side

[Tundratot]

The practice is growing world wide as people from those Arab cultural regions emigrate outward. Not surprising, really, since their youth will be ready to pick up the practices of the local cultures and those parents just won't.

As to the fact that the professor ascribes this across religions, I think that's because there are and have been many religions present in the Middle East. The growth of Muslim fundamentalism and the expansion of Arab culture into previously non-Arab parts of the Middle East has resulted in pushing out people of other religions. Sometimes it's easy to forget the the culture and the religion aren't the same.

[VXIII]

“The world is very large, it’s so large that one day I could even lose you. But in this world, as large as it is, know there’s a small heart, and you can never get lost in that heart, because it’s only for you, my love.”

Those are the most beautiful words I have ever heard, I hope Sahar heard them too...

[VXIII]

In their words, may the devil shit on Shafias, Hameds and Toobas graves, and take a piss on it too, I hate these assholes...

[Whisper]

You know I was watching a video of them walking and hes a short little puke and Im enjoying the fact that hes going to be in prison with guys that hate men like him
Foreign men that come here and pull their shit
Hes in our murderers prison right now and Paul Bernardo is in there too,they are holding he and his son there

[Tundratot]

You know I was watching a video of them walking and hes a short little puke

I was noticing the same thing. He was dwarfed by those officers.

[Whisper]

I was noticing the same thing. He was dwarfed by those officers.

yeah he may have had power over them from long term abuse
And when hes sentenced hes going to see what powerless is all about when he becomes bubbas bitch
Hes maybe 5 feet tall.im 5 feet and believe me I get a sore neck looking up hes in for a world of pain
My friend thats a lawyer said he will do everyday of those 25 years(limit here in Canada) we need DP back here
Theres talk of it

[Whisper]

Will Shafias take stand

Whether to put their clients on the witness stand is the question defence attorneys are mulling today as they put the final touches on their preparations in the Kingston Mills murder trial.
Peter Kemp, representing Mohammad Shafia, is first up on Thursday.
Kemp was not available for comment Tuesday, but he indicated Monday his first witness will likely be on the stand for two full days, Thursday and Friday. Kemp told the court he needed two days to prepare for that witness and that his work involved a trip to Quinte Detention Centre.
[...]
Kemp said he expects to continue on Monday and Tuesday with two more key witnesses, as well as two "peripheral" witnesses.
Are there advantages to calling the accused to testify murder trials?
"That's a hard thing to say," says Queen's University criminal law professor Don Stuart. "Counsel in a joint trial like this has to be mindful all along of what evidence has been brought in against his client."
What's important to remember, noted Stuart, is Canadian law stipulates that jurors cannot consider innocence or guilt based on whether the accused testifies.
"We're not supposed to draw an adverse inference against someone who doesn't testify," he said. "That's the law."
Two important questions arise over the possibility of Shafia testifying: Can he handle the stress? And what would he say in his own defence?
The 58-year-old businessman was suddenly absent from the courtroom the morning of Nov. 3.
The night before, he had been taken to hospital in Napanee with what the presiding judge, Justice Robert Maranger, described as a "fairly serious" medical emergency.
"Yesterday was stressful for him," Kemp acknowledged at the time.
The outlook for the trial continuing in the near future looked bleak that morning.
The following week, however, Shafia was back in the prisoners' box, the nature of his sudden and mysterious ailment never revealed.
Two weeks after that, the court heard that Shafia had experienced a previous medical episode on the day his daughters were buried in Montreal.
Kingston Police Det. Steve Koopman attended the funerals on July 5, 2009. Koopman told the court that he had noticed an ambulance following the ceremony.
Talking later to Hamed, he learned that Mohammad had been taken to hospital with a suspected "small heart attack."
The officer said the medical matter was never raised again.
Shafia has been largely unemotional during the trial. On a few occasions, he has wept listening to video testimony involving Tooba and mention of his children.
Shafia himself has appeared twice at the trial — in a videotaped interview in June 2009 and an interrogation session with police after his arrest that July.
During the interrogation, Shafia tells a police officer his "life has been ruined" by the deaths, and professes "my kids, I loved them with my heart."
[...]
In all of the video interrogations shown so far, only Tooba has placed all three of them at Kingston Mills in the early hours of June 30.
However, as Justice Maranger has told the jury, statements made by any of the accused in video recordings can only be used as evidence against that person.

http://www.thewhig.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3395746

[Whisper]

Canadian Imams to condemn honor killings in Friday prayers
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/articl...#ixzz1ftrWpqUo

[Nell]

I think that Sahar may have seen all the others being killed and gave up. That would explain her not having any head trauma. They could not drown all of them at once, so someone had to be last. She probably told them not to do that to her, that she wouldn't try to get out of the car. And why would she? She was alone in the world with them dead.

[VXIII]

If I read it correctly they had rooms 18 and 19, it could have been so easy to call them in one at a time and hold their heads under the bathtub which could easily explain the bruises on their heads, from them struggling and hitting their heads on the tub faucet, Sahar was so beaten down she may have just welcomed her death, I dont know but this story makes me very sad, especially for little Geeti, she knew, she knew as a 13 yr old what was going to happen, she tried to get herself out of it but couldnt, these are evil people and I dont hate too many people but I hate them and especially Tooba for letting her daughters, her own children be killed then lied and I feel for Rona, the 1st wife was so giving and kind enough when she could have children to choose her to be a 2nd wife and then Tooba turned on her, I know I could never be that giving and kind to share my husband with another but hey, thats their culture and I wont judge, I will say it again, if there is a devil, may he shit and piss on their graves and only sunshine and clean rain falls on the 4 womens graves. Rona was beautiful, too beautiful Ive seen the wedding pic to be married to that ugly fucker.

I will get on my knees and thank someone that I wasnt born into this society because they would have killed me long ago, because i am a selfish bitch and do as I please, they werent even selfish. Next "Evil Women: episode I want to see is Tooba, hope her daughter she cried over learns to hate her... Her son is already going to be someones dicksucking bitch.

[Whisper]

BOO FUCKING HOOO HES SO FUCKING FULL OF SHIT
This is just an update from noon
Shafia dad testifies he never interfered in daughters' lives

Mohammad Shafia, accused along with two other family members of killing his first wife and three daughters, told a Kingston, Ont., court Thursday he did not interfere in his children's lives.
Shafia, 58, the first witness for the defence in the lengthy trial, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder, as have the other accused, his 41-year-old wife, Tooba Yahya, and their 20-year-old son, Hamed.
Shafia, during his first day testifying, described how he fled his native Afghanistan to protect his family.
"We were a liberal family," he said. "And the women were in constant danger from the Taliban."
At one point, Shafia broke down in tears when asked about the marriage of his daughter Zainab, one of the victims.
He said he advised Zainab not to marry her boyfriend because he did not think he was "good." Zainab later married him, but the marriage was annulled within 24 hours.
Shafia was also questioned about his daughters' clothing choices.
He told the court he let his daughters dress as they liked and that he never forced them to wear the hijab.
"I never interfere in the clothing my children wear. It was up to them," he said.
[...]
The Crown alleges the sisters, two of whom were dating, were the victims of so-called honour killings
[..]
The prosecution alleges the slayings were sparked by the parents' anger over their girls' boyfriends, and how they dressed.
The defence went over some of the prosecution's wiretap evidence Thursday, asking Shafia to clarify what he meant at certain points.
In one recording, Shafia said, "Would a daughter be such a whore," and called for "the devil" to defecate "on their graves."
When asked by his lawyer what he meant, Shafia told the court he meant that the devil and God would be the ones to judge whether his daughters were bad or good.
Shafia also testified he sounded angry on the tapes because he felt betrayed after finding photographs of one of his daughters in revealing clothing.
He told the court he didn't find the pictures until after her death.
Crown prosecutors wrapped up their case on Monday with testimony from Shahrzad Mojab. She's a women's studies professor at the University of Toronto and an expert in so-called honour killings.
Mojab told the courtroom that in some cultures, honour is valued above human life.
This belief is seen predominantly in the Middle East, Mojab said.
When family honour is threatened, it is acceptable and expected that a male family member could kill a relative.

http://news.ca.msn.com/canada/shafia...hters-lives-24

just give them to me for an hour,what a piece of shit cant wait to hear all about his first prison BF next year

[Whisper]

'My children did a lot of cruelty toward me,' accused tells murder trial

KINGSTON, Ont. — A Montreal man accused of killing three of his teenage daughters and his first wife believed two of his children had been "cruel" to him by dressing in revealing clothes and consorting secretly with boyfriends, he told jurors at his murder trial Thursday.
"My children did a lot of cruelty toward me," Mohammad Shafia testified during questioning by his lawyer, Peter Kemp.
Shafia said he was angry when he saw a photo of one of his daughters in a short skirt, hugging a boyfriend she had secretly dated. He saw it after her death, he insisted.
"I was upset, I swore because I didn't expect this thing from my children," Shafia testified. "I was not happy about that."
Shafia said he expected that his children would have "consulted" him before making plans with boyfriends. He said he would have allowed the girls to marry boys of their choosing, even if he didn't approve of them.
[...]
Mohammad was Shafia's first wife. He married her in his native Afghanistan before the family moved to Canada in 2007. He passed her off as his cousin to bypass Canadian laws against polygamy.
[...]
Prosecutors allege the victims died in an honour killing, planned by Shafia because he felt his reputation had been tarnished. Jurors have heard that the three teenagers were defying family rules. Zainab ran away from home to a shelter and insisted on marrying a young Pakistani man. Shafia's first wife was asking for a divorce, an act that a cultural expert told the trial could provoke an honour killing. Geeti had asked child protection authorities to remove her from the home.
Just over half an hour into his daylong testimony, Shafia's face flushed red and he began to weep, the first of several such moments. He recounted Zainab's apology for running away and insisting on marrying someone Shafia said was "not a good boy."
hafia said he forgave her.
I said, 'Don't worry,' I gave her $100 and I kiss her face," he said, wiping away tears. "I didn't say anything else to her."
Kemp led Shafia through accusations made against him by some of the nearly 50 prosecution witnesses who testified in the previous 25 days.
Shafia denied abusing his first wife, despite the claims of several of her siblings who testified. He said Mohammad had never asked for a divorce.
"Rona was happy with us," Shafia testified.
Shafia denied abusing his children. He said he hit two of his children on one occasion, one evening in April 2009, when four of the children came home late.
"I slapped them once in my life," he testified. "I slapped them in the face only once . . . and I did not hit anyone else." Shafia said he also swore at another one of the children that evening.
Shafia was asked by Kemp to explain a conversation with Yahya, secretly recorded by police, in which he talked of his dead children and said, "May the devil shit on their graves."
Shafia said he meant that the devil should "check" their graves and God would decide their fate.
In another conversation he was recorded saying that if they came back to life a 100 times, he would "do it again." Shafia testified that he meant he would try to prevent them from doing bad things by giving them good advice.
Shafia dismissed the claim of Fazil Javid, Yahya's brother, who testified that Shafia asked him, in a phone conversation, to help kill Zainab in Sweden.
Shafia said he got a call from Javid, but because of long-standing enmity between the two men, he hung up.
"I did not even speak to Fazil," Shafia testified.
Shafia also denied speaking of killing Zainab in a conversation with Latif Hyderi, Yahya's uncle.
Shafia did not waver from his account of life in the Shafia home under questioning by prosecutor Laurie Lacelle.
He insisted he loved his children and both wives and that he had told police the truth about everything, except his lie that Mohammad was his cousin.
He said he had claimed she was a cousin for fear that their immigration application to Canada would be rejected.
He could not explain why he continued to claim she was his cousin, after her death.
Shafia was asked by Kemp if he had anything to do with the car ending up in the canal.
He repeated what he and Yahya said publicly days after the four deaths, that they had stopped in Kingston at a motel on the way home from a vacation in Niagara Falls and his oldest daughter Zainab took the car without permission. He awoke the next morning and discovered that the four family members were missing.
Shafia will be back on the witness stand Friday.

http://www.canada.com/news/children+...#ixzz1fzfxb2Wb


fuck I hate these will knots

will knot

When little clumps of shit get caught in your ass hair, and they WILL NOT come out.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/defin...rm=will%20knot

[Whisper]

Murder is no way to ‘regain your reputation,’ father accused in ‘honour killing’ trial testifies

KINGSTON, Ont. — The Montreal man accused of murdering four family members in an honour killing told jurors that his honour was important but killing his daughters and first wife would not restore it.
“My honour is important for me but . . . to kill someone, you can’t regain your reputation and honour,” Mohammad Shafia testified Friday, near the end of four hours of often accusatory questioning by prosecutor Laurie Lacelle. “Respected lady, you should know that in our culture and our religion, if someone kills his wife or daughter, there is no honourless person more than that person who committed that act.”
[..]
Prosecutors allege Shafia was angry that his daughters defied him, took boyfriends and dressed in revealing clothes. Mohammad had asked for a divorce, the trial heard, though Shafia denied the claim. Shafia acknowledged, during questioning by Lacelle, that he had called his daughters Zainab and Sahar “whores” and “prostitutes” after he saw photos of them posing in bikinis or underwear or hugging boyfriends. He said he did not see the photos until after their deaths.
Shafia’s testimony was spread over two days and near the end of the cross-examination by Lacelle, she read back to him his words captured by a police bug, in which he said, “there’s no value of life without honour.”
“And that’s how you felt, wasn’t it?” Lacelle asked.
Shafia said yes, but insisted he never thought of killing his children.
Yes, I’m Muslim, I don’t deny that but I’m not a killer . . . I came here in order to train and educate my children, to take them to school, what happened, God knows,” he said, beginning to cry.
Lacelle noted that after his arrest, while sitting in a police vehicle, he told Hamed: “We haven’t done anything wrong, they did it themselves.”
“You believed that their actions brought about their rightful deaths,” Lacelle said.
“Yes,” Shafia answered. Earlier in his testimony, he said he believed that everyone’s death is pre-determined and is in the hands of God.
Shafia testified that his 10-member family, travelling in two cars, stopped in Kingston in the early morning of June 30, while driving home from a vacation in Niagara Falls, Ont. They rented two rooms in a motel and then his daughter Zainab asked for the keys to the Sentra. Shafia said when he awoke the next morning, the car and the four family members were missing.

Cellphone records show that a call was made at 7:01 a.m. to Sahar’s cellphone. Shafia said he called, in an effort to locate the missing group. When he got no answer, he called his son, Hamed, who had driven home to Montreal in the other family vehicle. He also didn’t know where they were.
Shafia said “my worry was increasing” as time passed.
Lacelle noted Shafia didn’t call Sahar’s phone again and the family did not go to police to report the group missing until 12:30 p.m..

“Sir, you say you were worried about your missing family members but between 7 o’clock in the morning and 12:30 p.m. you made exactly one phone call to Sahar’s cellphone,” Lacelle said.
Sanchez. The two talked of moving to Honduras, he testified.
“I think I called once or twice,” Shafia said.
“You didn’t keep calling to see if she would answer,” Lacelle noted.
Shafia said he told his son Hamed to come back to Kingston. He testified that he wasn’t able to call police or ask motel staff if they had seen the missing family members because he doesn’t speak English fluently and was waiting for Hamed, who speaks English, to return to Kingston.
Lacelle noted that Shafia didn’t wake his English-speaking children who were with him.
“No,” Shafia said, without offering an explanation.
Lacelle spent more than 10 minutes quizzing Shafia about his revelation that during the family’s vacation in Niagara Falls, he drove back toward Montreal alone on June 27, 2009, and took a call on Hamed’s cellphone, which was in the vehicle. It was Sahar, he said, calling to say the entire family wanted to go home. Shafia said he happened to take the call in the Kingston area. He immediately turned around and drove back to Niagara Falls.
Lacelle said that during Shafia’s interrogation after his arrest, when confronted with cellphone records that revealed Hamed’s phone was in the Kingston area on June 27, Shafia told a police officer that he and Hamed had made the more than six-hour trip from Niagara Falls to Montreal some time between June 24 and June 29.
Shafia testified Friday that he and Hamed “might have” have driven to Montreal between those dates, in addition to the June 27 trip he made alone.
“That’s something that you never told us either yesterday or in your previous interviews,” Lacelle noted.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12...ial-testifies/

Sahar Shafia with Ricardo Sanchez. The two talked of moving to Honduras, he testified.

.

cant wait until his chosen son is the chosen bitch of the cell block!!

[Whisper]

Geeti Shafia asked for “immediate placement” with a foster family, when she spoke to a police officer weeks before her death. “She said she had no freedom; she wanted to be like her friends.”

.

Christie Blatchford: Father accused in ‘honour killing’ trial makes his pitch for world’s greatest dad

Father of the year: This, ultimately, is the face Afghan businessman Mohammad Shafia has turned to Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Maranger and the jurors presiding at his murder trial.

As he told prosecutor Laurie Lacelle once, looking imploringly towards the jury box as he described his concern about his eldest daughter’s choice of a husband, “Respected lady, whoever has a young daughter here, I’m sure they would make sure they marry a good boy.”
Accused with his second wife and oldest son of what prosecutors allege was the mass “honour killing” of three teenage daughters and his barren first wife, the 58-year-old Mr. Shafia took the witness stand in his own defence Thursday.

There, occasionally holding up a large white handkerchief to catch his tears, he attempted to paint a picture of himself as a loving, liberal-minded, generous patriarch — a bit of a free spirit even, prone to handing out money and kisses — whose only wish for his children was happiness.

He was taken through his evidence by his lawyer, Peter Kemp, and in short order, denied there was any real discord in the household or that he was a tyrant who, when travelling abroad, used his oldest son as his lieutenant on the home front.

The critical denial at the end of Mr. Kemp’s examination-in-chief — “Did you have anything to do with it?” meaning the deaths — was bizarre, or as lawyers say, non-responsive to the question.

Mr. Shafia replied he didn’t even know the area where his family died until the police had showed him afterwards, this despite the fact that at the start of his testimony, just two hours earlier, he said the family had been there at least twice before on stopovers during holiday trips.
On June 30, 2009, the bodies of Zainab, Sahar and Geeti Shafia, then respectively 19, 17 and 13, and their 52-year-old “aunt” Rona Amir Mohammad, who was in fact Mr. Shafia’s closeted first wife, were found in a submerged black Nissan at the bottom of the Kingston Mills locks just outside this eastern Ontario city.

Mr. Shafia, his second wife, 41-year-old Tooba Mohammad Yahya, and their son Hamed, now 20, are all pleading not guilty to four counts each of first-degree murder.

Mr. Shafia’s greatest challenge may have been to explain the incendiary comment he made about his dead daughters in a conversation captured on Kingston Police wiretaps.

“May the Devil shit on their graves!” is what Mr. Shafia famously said.

Despite Mr. Kemp’s best efforts to have him say this was just a common old refrain back in Kabul, Mr. Shafia missed the bald hints and instead explained, “To me, it means the Devil will go out and check with them in their graves, and if they have done a good thing or a bad thing, it would be up to God.”

To Patrick McCann, who represents Hamed and asked, “Is that a common term for Afghans to use when angry?” Mr. Shafia dutifully replied “Yes.”

And to Ms. Lacelle, who noted that despite his claims to have forgiven Zainab her various transgressions, “if you said the Devil should shit on her grave, you still hadn’t forgiven her” Mr. Shafia insisted he had. “I gave her money, I kissed her face,” he said.

His testimony, clear as mud in every regard, stood in sharp contrast to the evidence of virtually every other witness who has testified at trial and to his own vicious utterings caught on the wiretaps.
From family relatives to strangers to professionals, from police in Montreal, where the family lived, to the girls’ teachers to the ineffective workers they called in from Quebec’s child-protection system, witness after witness has told the jurors that the four were riven with fear — afraid of Mr. Shafia, afraid of Hamed, afraid to leave, afraid to stay.

[...]
As an uncle, Latif Hyderi, once put it, the females in particular lived “like political prisoners.”

But Mr. Shafia denied all that and maintained that he knew only one, Zainab, who had run away in April that year and returned when promised she could marry her boyfriend, was unhappy.

On the wiretaps, in conversations with Ms. Yahya and Hamed in the family minivan, Mr. Shafia cursed his dead daughters as filth and whores and once cried that whenever he looked at the pictures of Sahar and Zainab, scantily clad posing with their boyfriends, “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, they betrayed us immensely. They violated us immensely. There can be no betrayal, no treachery, no violation more than this. By God!”

But Thursday, he maintained that what he meant by him “doing well” was merely that he had done his duty as a father and tried to guide his daughters onto “a straight path.”

Except for Zainab, whose treachery he knew about, he said he believed until their deaths that Sahar and Geeti had been good girls. Only after they died, he said, did he discover the pictures of Sahar with her boyfriend, and learn the full story of Geeti’s acting out at school.

Ms. Lacelle pounced.

If he didn’t know about the younger girls’ misbehaviour, and hadn’t spoken to them to correct their conduct, then what did he mean about having done well?

“You were talking about having killed them,” she said flatly.
No, no,” Mr. Shafia replied.

Ms. Lacelle will continue her cross-examination Friday.

It is a formidable enough task, made more difficult here by the fact that every word is translated from Farsi to English and back again, which allows for long pauses and for the witness to request questions be repeated.

And Mr. Shafia, in addition to being an exemplary father, if only by his own measure, is also a shameless brown-noser (“the police in this country is like family,” he said once cheerfully), compulsively flowery (“Dear lady” and “Respected lady” is how he addressed Ms. Lacelle), and the sort of fellow who is able to claim, when faced with a mound of pictures of himself with a chocolate-covered face, that he never touches the stuff, never has and never will.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...-greatest-dad/

[Tundratot]

His testimony, clear as mud in every regard, stood in sharp contrast to the evidence of virtually every other witness who has testified at trial and to his own vicious utterings caught on the wiretaps.
From family relatives to strangers to professionals, from police in Montreal, where the family lived, to the girls’ teachers to the ineffective workers they called in from Quebec’s child-protection system, witness after witness has told the jurors that the four were riven with fear — afraid of Mr. Shafia, afraid of Hamed, afraid to leave, afraid to stay.

And Mr. Shafia, in addition to being an exemplary father, if only by his own measure, is also a shameless brown-noser (“the police in this country is like family,” he said once cheerfully), compulsively flowery (“Dear lady” and “Respected lady” is how he addressed Ms. Lacelle), and the sort of fellow who is able to claim, when faced with a mound of pictures of himself with a chocolate-covered face, that he never touches the stuff, never has and never will.

I love this reporter's editorial commentary interspersed with the coverage. She definitely has a point of view and no compunction about voicing it.

Unfortunately, I think some of things that so offend her are typically Middle Eastern. Machiavellian thinking, even Byzantine, is very common. Flowery speech, check. Obsequiousness, check. Telling people what is expedient, check.

[Whisper]

I love this reporter's editorial commentary interspersed with the coverage. She definitely has a point of view and no compunction about voicing it.

Unfortunately, I think some of things that so offend her are typically Middle Eastern. Machiavellian thinking, even Byzantine, is very common. Flowery speech, check. Obsequiousness, check. Telling people what is expedient, check.

I had written a paragraph about her but my Gbaby kinda knocked it off and Im to tired to rewrite it but I love her I read her everynight and she just puts it like it is

[Whisper]

I wanna say this nicely as to not insult anyone
But hes has pissed alot off here,coming here pulling his shit that in his country wouldve flown under the radar
People are tired of these guys coming here ,pulling crap then bad mouthing our country
Stay home in your country if you want to treat your women and daughters like she is dirt b.c here it wont fly

[Rockin Ma]

I wanna say this nicely as to not insult anyone
But hes has pissed alot off here,coming here pulling his shit that in his country wouldve flown under the radar
People are tired of these guys coming here ,pulling crap then bad mouthing our country
Stay home in your country if you want to treat your women and daughters like she is dirt b.c here it wont fly

It makes no sense to me. The two countries are so different it just isn't reasonable to me relocate and keep the same way of thinking. I kinda don't think his "Honor" had anything to do with it other than him being disgusted at how Canadianized his family had become and them enjoying freedoms against his say so. For the most part people relocate for a better life. They choose the other country for that and want to be like the people of the country. It would be impossible for me to become an Afghan, but if I lived there, I would have to adapt to their way of life. These girls just wanted to be normal in their surroundings. In that house they lived like they were in their home country, but just out the window the better, free life was dangled just out of their grasps, but open to gaze at.

[VXIII]

You know when I was a kid I used to read Arabian Nights and see movies etc and I loved their culture, it seemed so colorful, beautiful and peaceful sometimes, at least how I perceived it, it seemed as though it would have felt very safe to be protected and cared for in the stories I read about and saw, never did I know until maybe 5 years or so ago, that it is more like an imprisonment. That was the extent of my knowledge of Muslims before and I admired Salahadin as a great man, still do I think for some of the things he did. There is a new show coming on soon, think its called American Muslim or something, hopefully I can catch it because I am sure or want to believe that this family is not a typical family, that they arent all like this, that some families are actually very loving and kind to ALL of their children like I read about in Arabian Nights,

Like Rockin Ma said, I just dont see how he thought his children would not be influenced and expected to keep to Aphgans way of life. Does anyone know how long they had been living in Canada?