Later on Friday afternoon, the seven women and five men sitting four metres away will begin deliberations to decide their fate: Guilty, or not.
Justice Robert Maranger began his instructions to the jury Friday morning in the high-profile murder trial of Afghan businessman Mohammad Shafia, 59, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42, and their 21-year-old son, Hamed.
They stand accused of killing daughters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and 13-year-old Geeti, along with Shafia’s first wife in a polygamous marriage, Rona Amir Mohammad.
All four were found dead on June 30, 2009, floating in the family’s recently-bought Nissan Sentra, submerged in a lock at Kingston Mills.
On Friday, two of the Shafia’s three other children showed up in court and sat directly behind the glassed-in prisoner box.
The case has captivated Canadians and others around the world because of the Crown’s theory that the four females were victims of an “honour killing.”
They were murdered, the prosecution argued, in response to a loss of family honour, a loss that was apparently due to the victims’ behaviour. The teens were disobedient, had boyfriends, wore revealing clothing, and told authorities of problems at home. One ran away from home. The first wife, meanwhile, talked of divorce, of becoming a burden.
In his charge to the jury, Maranger reminded the jurors that they alone are the judges of the facts. He explained they can find the accused guilty of first-degree — or premeditated — murder; or of second-degree murder, where the deaths were not planned. They may also find the accused not guilty.
A finding that one or more of the accused aided or abetted the principal offender in the case could still apply to either first- or second-degree murder, he explained.
He told the jury that a finding of guilt must be beyond a reasonable doubt. “However,” he said, “it’s nearly impossible to prove anything with absolute certainty, and Crown Counsel is not required to do so.”
He also explained what circumstantial evidence is, adding there was a “great deal of circumstantial evidence” in this case.
The case also captivated the public because of the mountain of evidence presented by the Crown, both physical and obtained from wiretaps.
The Crown’s theory is that all three participated and contributed to a mass murder that was well planned. The family was trimmed from 10 to six to get rid of those who were most problematic (Zainab and Sahar), or were on the same path (Geeti), or who couldn’t be trusted to keep silent (Rona).
“Shafia, Tooba and Hamed decided there was a diseased limb on their family tree,” Crown Prosecutor Laurie Lacelle told the jury on Thursday. “Their solution was to remove the diseased limb in its entirety and to prune the tree back to the good wood.”
They searched the Internet on such subjects as “where to commit a murder,” and scouted out sites. 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 a Nissan Sentra, and sent it off the canal precipice. It got hung up on the concrete edge, however, and had to be pushed in with the family’s Lexus SUV.
That caused damage to the Lexus’s headlamp, pieces of which were found at the canal, and in Montreal where Hamed staged an accident to cover up the damage.
The Crown says there was enough time to do all of this, given timeline evidence that came up at trial.
Intercepted communications also recorded Shafia using harsh language to refer to his daughters as “treacherous” and “whores.”
Most pointedly, he willed the devil to “sh-- on their graves.” He said that when he viewed provocative photos of his daughters found on their cellphones, he is 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.”
The defence says it was all an accident.
Zainab, as the family has contended all along, took the keys and the Nissan for a joyride, and ended up in the canal.
Defence lawyer Peter Kemp offered a timeline that suggested four people couldn’t have been drowned such that Hamed could be back in Montreal by 6:48 a.m., when he took a call on his cellphone there.
That it was an honour killing, defence lawyer Patrick McCann said, was “preposterous.”
Though the Crown presented evidence for motive, Maranger told the jury a motive is not necessary to find the defendants guilty. “The Crown must prove the accused intended to commit the offence, not that the accused had a motive,” he explained.
After Maranger finishes his instructions, the jury will be immediately sequestered to begin their deliberations.
Shafia ‘honour-killing’ trial all about sex, control
KINGSTON, ONT. —(by Rosie Di Manno)
If they’d been merely raped, we would not be hearing the names of Zainab, Sahar, Geeti and Rona taken in vain, such vain.
Not in a courtroom, where there are some rules of procedure and decorum for victims of sexual assault, their pasts another country, no longer open to exploration and exploitation by defence counsel.
But these women — girls, really, three of them — are dead. Whether by murder or dreadful accident is still undetermined — that’s for the jury to decide — yet tragically dead all the same, thus beyond the scope of cross-examination, their voices forever silenced.
I want to shout bloody murder for them. No, not in the legal sense, because it’s forbidden to preempt a jury’s verdict or characterize the evidence while a trial is in progress.
What the defence lawyers have done here, however, over the past two days, has been a disgrace. The criminal bar will counter that these three men are simply doing their job, which is to avert a finding of guilt on four counts of first-degree murder against a trio of defendants: Mohammad Shafia, his second wife, Tooba Yahya, and their oldest son, Hamed, accused of committing a mass “honour killing’’ of intimates, the elimination of troublesome females, as the prosecution alleges, to restore their family’s blackened reputation.
Here is Patrick McCann, addressing the jury Wednesday in his closing submission, speaking of Zainab, the 19-year-old who’d brought a boyfriend into the home while her parents were overseas.
“She knew her parents were opposed to boyfriends, yet, as soon as her parents are away in Dubai, she brings one home. Agree with it or not, that was the rule in the family.’’
For that transgression, as court as heard, Zainab was prevented from going to school for some eight months, allowed to continue her studies thereafter only while chaperoned by Hamed or Tooba.
“What can we say about Zainab? I don’t want to be standing here criticizing someone who’s deceased,’’ continued McCann, before doing exactly that. “A picture starts to emerge, maybe she’s a bit spoiled, maybe she’s used to getting her own way, maybe she’s used to telling stories.’’
Of Sahar, 17 when her body, along with that of her sisters and their surrogate mother, Rona Amir Mohammad, who was Shafia’s first wife in a polygamous Afghan marriage, was discovered June 30, 2009, inside a Nissan submerged in the Kingston Mills Locks, McCann was scoffing. Court has been told, by half a dozen witnesses, that Sahar was frightened of her father and Hamed, that she’d complained to teachers and child welfare authorities about violence and conflict in the home, that she was terrified an adolescent brother (whose name is protected by a publication ban) would blab to their father that she had a boyfriend, would call her a “whore.’’
Drama queen, McCann suggested. Like her little brother, Sahar “quickly realized you can get away with a lot at school if you claim to be having troubles at home.’’
As for Geeti, just 13, there was the shoplifting, the “temper tantrums,’’ the truancy, that time she was sent home from school for wearing inappropriate clothing. “She was a bit of a rebel and didn’t care much about rules and wasn’t interested in school,’’ said McCann. “But is that a motive to murder Geeti? . . . These girls were acting dishonorably and had to be killed? I’m saying to you, ladies and gentlemen, that’s preposterous, that’s quite preposterous.’’
Peter Kemp, Shafia’s lawyer, had struck a similarly dismissive tone about the victims. “Sahar complained she couldn’t have a normal life, she couldn’t pick her own friends. Sounds like a typical teenager to me.
“I want you to consider the fact she was less than honest on occasion and made up stoies to cover for herself.’’
When a photo that Sahar had taken of herself, wearing a bikini, was flashed on the monitor — actually, left up there for rather a long time — Kemp described the voluptuous teen as “a glamorous young woman who looks healthy and is not being particularly modest in that picture.’’
Tooba’s lawyer, David Crowe, as well as McCann again on Wednesday, tried to take the sting out of a nasty slur delivered by Shafia, captured on police intercepts, in which the non-grieving father says of his daughters, freshly buried: “May the devil s—t on their graves.’’
Oh, but that’s just wacky Afghan culture, and shouldn’t be interpreted literally. Just “dramatic usage of language,’’ argued McCann; really means something more akin to “the hell with them.’’ So, “the hell with them,’’ about dead daughters, that’s okay then.
A cultural expert, summoned by the Crown last month, their final witness, had spoken extensively about honour-based societies such as Afghanistan or Afghan expat communities in liberal societies such as Canada. The concept of honour, testified Shahzrad Mojab, is rooted in a man’s need to control female sexuality of a sister, a daughter, a wife. She quoted an Arab adage: “A man’s honour lies between the legs of a woman.’’
But Mojab had an agenda, countered McCann. “Dr. Mojab’s opinion was clearly coloured by her feminist point of view. She believes patriarchal violence is universal.’’
It’s all about the sex, you know, the stench of female sexuality. Zainab and Sahar were wanton women, caught out in the arms of boys. Geeti and Rona were their allies. They’d brought about their own “rightful deaths,’’ as Shafia says on one of the wiretaps, and as Crown attorney Laurie Lacelle reminded the jury.
“He said it on the wiretaps, he said it to you (on the stand) and you should have no doubt that’s why they’re dead.’’
Where defiant Zainab had been initially targeted for murder, continued Lacelle, the others would eventually follow — a clearing house of homicide that came to include rebel Geeti and irritating Rona.
“Having decided to kill two daughters, getting rid of a third could not have caused them much more difficulty.
“Once you’ve decided to kill one, two or three of your daughters, your sisters, what moral imperative would stop you from killing your troublesome first wife, in Shafia’s case, and your competition, in Tooba’s case?’’
In this trial, it’s the prosecution doing the defending.
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