Family saw slain girls as treacherous for having boyfriends, court hears
KINGSTON, Ont. - A Montreal family couldn't bear the "treachery" of their three teenaged daughters having boyfriends, so they drowned them and the father's first wife, pushing a car into a canal and staging the scene to look like an implausible accident, court heard Thursday.
Days after the bodies were found the father was recorded saying, "There is nothing more valuable than our honour."
Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, her husband Mohammad Shafia, 58, and their son, Hamed Mohammad Shafia, 20, are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder.
Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Shafia's first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside a submerged black Nissan Sentra discovered June 30, 2009 in the Rideau Canal. The family had stopped in Kingston on their way home from a trip to Niagara Falls.
An expert will be called to testify about honour killings and how in extreme cases, killing can be seen in some cultures as a way to restore honour to a family, the Crown attorney said Thursday at the outset of the trial. Disobedience by a female member of the family can cause shame and taint family honour, she said.
Laurie Lacelle quoted police wiretaps made surreptitiously in the days after the deaths that show the family's concern for their honour.
"Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows, nothing is more dear to me than my honour," Shafia said. "Let's leave our destiny to God, and may God never make me, you or your mother honourless...There is nothing more valuable than our honour."
And now three are dead.Great.
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