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Shafia Honour Killing Trial: Mohammad Shafia Condemned Dead Daughters

First Posted: 01/29/2012 7:09 pm Updated: 01/30/2012 7:53 am

As you read: Look for connections to the story of Othello & Desdemona. Highlight these connections, and make a note in the margins. Connection to Article Text
Othello/Desdemona

KINGSTON, Ont. - Two days before Mohammad Shafia was arrested for the murder of his three daughters and one of his two wives, he went on a cruel rant about his dead children, cursing and condemning their supposed treachery and then he washed his hands. It was a profound end to a hateful rant from a man found guilty Sunday along with his son and wife of four counts of first-degree murder committed for reasons most Canadians would find trivial such as dating. But with that hate-filled diatribe Shafia made it clear he was indeed washing his hands of his daughters, comparing them to prostitutes, telling himself that he "did well" and would do the same again if they came back to life 100 times. "They committed treason themselves," Shafia said on a secret wiretap police recorded by bugging his minivan. "It was all treason, they committed treason from beginning to the end. They betrayed kindness, the betrayed our religion and creed, they betrayed out tradition, they betrayed everything. Let's stop here, get out and wash my hands and come back. OK." It was July 20, 2009, and his daughters and wife had not yet been dead three weeks. On June 30, 2009, court heard, Shafia, his favourite wife Tooba Yahya, 42, and their eldest son Hamed, 21, killed three troublesome Shafia daughters and Rona Amir Mohammad, the unwanted first wife. They had come up with an elaborate plan to drown the four, then place their bodies in a car, send it plunging into a canal and make it all look like a tragic accident. Trouble in the wealthy Afghan-Canadian family had been brewing for some time. The Crown painted a picture of a household controlled by a domineering Shafia, with Hamed keeping his sisters in line and doling out discipline when his father was away on frequent business trips to Dubai. Some of the Shafia children followed the rules and the others didn't. The ones who couldn't be controlled, The Crown said, are now dead. Rona was not treated much better than an unruly child. And all any of them wanted was freedom, The Crown said. Zainab had run away, but that in itself shamed the family, so she was coaxed back with a promise to marry her boyfriend Ammar. The family viewed him as a

loser and was not pleased with the relationship, but if she was married she would be Ammar's problem, not theirs, and her behaviour couldn't affect their honour. Sahar too was dating, though she tried to keep her Christian boyfriend secret from her parents. Condoms were found in her room, as were pictures of her wearing short skirts and shorts, hugging her boyfriend. That clothing caused Shafia to curse Sahar as a whore after her death. Two months before she was found in the canal, Sahar told her boyfriend's aunt that if her parents found out about her relationship she was "a dead woman." Geeti was becoming almost impossible to control: skipping school, failing classes, being sent home for wearing revealing clothes and stealing. But her most egregious breach was telling almost every authority figure she encountered that she wanted to be sent to foster care. There was a family code of silence and Geeti broke that, it was alleged. If the Shafias thought Zainab and Sahar were hard to control, Geeti would be their worst nightmare. For Geeti, the writing was on the wall, the Crown said. Rona was Shafia's first wife but, unable to conceive, her status in the Shafia household began eroding as soon as a young Tooba Yahya was brought in as a polygamous wife. Shafia beat her and "made life a torture," Rona wrote in a diary. Yahya called her a servant, held onto Rona's passport and would tell her "your life is in my hands," she said. Rona spent her days wandering the streets, crying, sitting in her room or using payphones to call relatives, she wrote. Rona, Zainab, Sahar and Geeti died at the tail end of a family trip to Niagara Falls, Ont. They were heading back to Montreal and had stopped in Kingston for the night when tragedy struck The girls were driven to the canal and killed there There's also the evidence that nobody tried to escape the car during its plunge into the water or as it submerged in the canal. The driver's window was fully open, nobody was wearing a seat belt, and their bodies were found more or less floating over seats Zainab and Geeti in the front, Sahar and Rona in the back. The police certainly didn't think [this was an accident scenari], and began to treat the deaths as suspicious almost immediately. By the time Shafia, Yahya and Hamed were arrested, the case against them included the intercepted conversations. Comments mostly made by Shafia on those wiretaps provided the foundation for the Crown's "honour killing" theory. "I say to myself, 'Would they come back to life a hundred times, for you to do the same again,'" Shafia says on one. "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." "Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows...nothing is more dear to me than my honour," Shafia says on another.