KINGSTON, ONT.—This is Canada. They won’t be “hoisted onto the gallows.” But they’re going to prison for life.
Mohammad Shafia: Guilty on four counts of first-degree murder.
Tooba Mohammad Yahya: Guilty on four counts of first-degree murder.
Hamed Shafia: Guilty on four counts of first degree murder.
On Sunday afternoon, after 15 hours of deliberation, the jury of five men and seven women returned with their verdict.
Justice — 31 months removed from mass homicide at the Kingston Mills Locks.
Justice
and vindication for Zainab, Sahar and Geeti Shafia, for Rona Amir Mohammad.
Justice — the best defence they could afford and presumption of innocence for all the accused — but a final day of reckoning for them at the Frontenac County Courthouse.
They’d waited for the verdict in the basement cell. It arrived shortly before 2 p.m.
Guilty across the board and no chance of parole for 25 years.
Mohammad Shafia is 59.
Tooba Mohammad Yahya is 42.
Hamed Shafia is 21.
The Shafia sisters were still in their teens when their lives came to an end in the early morning hours of June 30, 2009. Gorgeous Zainab was 19. Sultry Sahar was 17. Rebellious Geeti was 13. And Rona – sad, doomed, betrayed Rona — was 52.
Remember them.
The jury did.
Before his arrest, patriarch Mohammad Shafia had declared boastfully, oozing self-righteousness: “Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows … nothing is more dear to me than my honour.’’
No doubt that thought will keep him warm at night in his jail cell.
This is the price of “honour.” This is the price exacted for an “honour killing.”
As trials go, jurors faced a complex task. They had to consider more than three months of proceedings, including the testimony of 58 witnesses, 165 exhibits, physical evidence, forensics, wiretaps, laptop searches and diametrically opposing arguments from the Crown and the defence.
At the core of the trial was the key question: Were the deaths the result of a tragic car accident, as the defence contended, or murder driven by outrage over family honour besmirched?
A precise starting point for the saga is difficult to decipher. Could have been the moment that Zainab fled the family’s home in Montreal and sought sanctuary at a women’s shelter, triggering the “downward spiral of turmoil in that household.” Could have been when photographs of Sahar in her boyfriend’s embrace were discovered and shown to Sahar — prints of those pictures were found by police in the family’s Lexus and in the side-pocket of Hamed’s suitcase, packed for a getaway to Dubai that was prevented by his arrest. Could have been, arguably, when the clan of 10 immigrated to Canada in 2007 — settling amidst an alien culture where the social mores would remain forever cold-shouldered — setting in motion all subsequent events, every happenstance and choice that led ultimately to four bodies inside a vehicle at the bottom of the Rideau Canal.
The criminal chronicles, however, of Zainab, Sahar, Geeti and Rona began on the morning of June 30, 2009, when the family’s newly purchased — $5,000 — second-hand Nissan Sentra was found submerged in a lock at Kingston Mills. A civilian diver subsequently discovered there were people floating inside.
The victims were three Shafia daughters: Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and 13-year-old Geeti, along with Shafia’s first wife in a clandestinely polygamous marriage, Rona Amir Mohammad, 52.
This grisly discovery would eventually lead to first-degree murder charges for each of the defendants and national hand-wringing over the phenomenon of “honour killings” imported to Canada from abroad.
And the plot had originated with Mohammad Shafia, said Crown attorney Laurie Lacelle in her closing submissions: “It was Shafia who set the plan in motion and offered the first concept for the murders – drowning.”
At trial — where opening statements began on Oct. 20 — the prosecution would formalize its theory that this was not just a mass murder but a mass honour killing, provoked by the victims’ behaviour, conduct so offensive to parents and brother (and, in Rona’s case, a husband) that homicide was the only remedy, a toxic salve for the Shafia reputation.
The teens were disobedient and defiant, Zainab and Sahar took boyfriends, all three girls wore revealing clothing — adolescent Geeti was actually sent home to change after showing up for class in a sweater cut too low — and, at various points, told authorities of problems at home. Zainab fled, which the Crown said was the “catalyst” for the murder plan.
Rona, meanwhile, the barren and eclipsed first wife — pushed out of the marital bed by preferred and fertile Tooba (a point she emphasized from the witness stand, insistent that Shafia had no further conjugal relations with his first missus when the second arrived on the scene) — had spoken of divorce and become a burden. The handsome woman who’d brought a considerable dowry to the union had asked Shafia for money — variously cited as $50,000 to $500,000 — to start her life anew near siblings in France. Shafia allegedly offered her $5,000.
It is intriguing that, as Montreal immigration lawyer Sabine Venturelli testified at the preliminary hearing, she’d been offered $10,000 by Shafia to close the file on Rona’s application for permanent residency status and have her sent back to Afghanistan. Though Venturelli did testify at trial, this detail was never heard by the jury because defence lawyers successfully argued it was hearsay. The offer had allegedly been relayed to Venturelli, on Shafia’s behalf, by an aunt of Tooba who lived in Montreal. At that point, Rona’s application had been progressing. She’d joined the family five months after everyone else had arrived in Montreal. Shafia came to Canada under the immigrant investor program, essentially a way of buying into the country, as permanent residents, for the well-heeled.
Justice Robert Maranger had instructed the jury they were to find the defendants guilty of either first-degree or second-degree murder or not guilty. A finding of manslaughter was not an option.
First-degree murder would imply premeditation. In the case of second-degree the planning element would not apply. Both mean life sentences but with no chance of parole for 25 years in first-degree murder and parole after anywhere from 10 to 25 years for second-degree, at the discretion of the judge.
Would that have made a difference for these convicted felons? For Hamed, no doubt, but even facing a quarter century behind bars, he’d still be only in his mid-40s upon release. And pious self-certitude – our murders, right or wrong – was a quality in abundance among the suspects, from the moment police planted bugs in their car and home phone.
Referencing sexy photos of voluptuous Zainab and Sahar — cellphone pics they’d taken of themselves — Shafia was both apoplectic and dead certain of having done the right thing. “Whenever I see those pictures, I am consoled. I say to myself, ‘you did well. Would they come back to life a hundred times, for you do to 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.
“They committed treason themselves. It was all treason. They committed treason from beginning to end. They betrayed kindness, they betrayed Islam, they betrayed our religion and creed, they betrayed everything.
“They brought about their rightful deaths.’’
And what did Tooba ever say in defence of the daughters she’d borne?
“I know Sadaf (Zainab) was already done, but I wish two others weren’t.”
Of Rona – well, Wife No. 1 was never on Tooba’s conscience.
A finding that one or more of the accused aided or abetted the principle offender in the case would still apply to either first- or second-degree murder had explained to the jury last Friday, in his lengthy instructions.
He also reminded the jury, as did the Crown, that although an abundance of evidence was presented to that effect, a “motive’’ — honour killing as argued by the Crown — was neither needed not proof required.
The case had revolved, as the judge noted, a “great deal of circumstantial evidence.”
The Crown said that all three defendants participated in and contributed to a planned mass murder. They searched the Internet on such subjects as “where to commit a murder,” and scouted out sites, prosecutors documented. They chose the locks at Kingston Mills on a return family trip from Niagara Falls. They drowned their intimates somewhere on the site, placed them in the Nissan, and attempted to tip that vehicle off the precipice of the northern-most lock. The Nissan got up on the concrete ledge, however, and the Lexus was deployed to push the smaller vehicle into the water.
That episode — unplanned, obviously — caused damage to the Lexus’ headlamp, pieces of which were found at the canal and in Montreal where Hamed admitted to staging an accident with a guard rail in a parking lot, specifically to cover up damage absorbed by the SUV. Damage to the two vehicles would later be matched up by accident reconstruction experts.
Intercepted communications also recorded Shafia using caustic language to refer to his daughters, calling them “treacherous’’ and “whores.”
Shafia seemingly justified the murders on one intercept: “No, Tooba, they messed up. There was no other way. Tooba, for the love of God, look at what they did. No, Tooba, they were treacherous to both themselves and us. For the love of God, Tooba, damnation on this life of ours, on these years of life that we lead.”
And he was unrepentant: “Even if they come back to life a hundred times, if I have a cleaver in my hand, I will (them) to pieces. Not once but a hundred times. As they acted that cruel towards you and me, for the love of God, what had we done (to them)?: We had excess had we committed that they … undressed themselves in front of boys?
“If we remain alive one night or one year, we have no tension in our hearts, (thinking that) our daughter is in the arms of this or that boy, in the arms of this or that man. God curse their graduation! Curse of God on both of them (Zainab and Sahar), on their kind. God’s curses on them for a generation.
“May the devil sh-- on their graves! Is that what a daughter should be? What a daughter be such a whore?’’
For the trio of defence counsel, this was always portrayed as a dreadful accident, with a confused Zainab, who had no licence, at the wheel, driving the Nissan catastrophically into the canal.
That it was an honour killing, Patrick McCann – who represented Hamed (who never took the stand) – said was “preposterous.”
As the family maintained from the start, Zainab took the keys to the Nissan after the family had checked into two rooms at the Kingston East Motel, taking the car for a joyride with three passengers, Rona purportedly in search of phone cards – at 2 a.m.
Defence lawyer Peter Kemp, for Shafia, offered a timeline that suggested four people couldn’t have been drowned with enough time to spare, such that Hamed could be back in Montreal by 6.48, when he took a call on his cellphone in that city.
The prosecution dismantled that proposal, countering with a different timeline.
Hamed never took the stand. Tooba did and tried to deflect suspicion from her oldest boy, even if that meant throwing her husband under the bus.
And Shafia, who dabbed a handkerchief to his eyes at various junctures of the trial, he maintained innocence on the stand but cut the victims – Zainab and Sahar especially – no slack for their sins.
His conscience, as the intercepts had shown beyond a doubt, was at peace: “I (am) happy and my conscience is clear. They haven’t done good and God punished them. My conscience, my God, my religion, my creed, aren’t shameful. Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows … nothing is more dear to me than my honour.’’
Father had advised and reassured son: “We are not ashamed of our conscience, neither you nor I nor your mother. Be like a man. Your mother is also like a man … Even if God forbid, they hoist us onto the gallows.
“Don’t think about it, don’t worry about it, whatever the eventuality, it is from God. We accept it wholeheartedly.
“There is nothing more valuable than our honour.”
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