KINGSTON, Ont. – Three girls allegedly killed by their family over honour complained to police, child protection authorities and social workers just months before their deaths that their father and brother assaulted them and their mother feared for their lives, court heard Tuesday.
The eldest daughter, Zainab, 19, ran away from home to a women’s shelter a little more than two months before the girls’ bodies were found in a submerged car. She told workers there that she was afraid of her father and didn’t feel safe at home because of physical violence.
The youngest of the three, Geeti, 13, told police and a child protection worker that she wanted to be removed from her home and placed in foster care. Their father often threatened to kill them, Geeti told police, and when they came home late from shopping a week earlier, he hit her and pulled her hair, and her brother punched her in the eye, court heard.
The girls’ parents, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, and Mohammad Shafia, 58, and their brother Hamed Mohammad Shafia, 20, are accused of killing them, as well as Shafia’s other wife in a polygamous marriage.
The bodies of Zainab, Sahar, 17, and Geeti Shafia, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found in a car at the bottom of the Rideau Canal in Kingston on June 30, 2009. Court has heard Shafia thought the girls were “treacherous” and the Crown alleges they were killed to restore the family’s honour.
Much of the tension in the family revolved around Zainab and the fact that she was dating a Pakistani boy. The Montreal family, originally from Afghanistan, did not approve, court has heard. They also disagreed over whether Zainab should wear a hijab.
Court has heard that Shafia called a relative to say he wanted to kill Zainab because she was going to the library, going online, hanging out with friends and dating. Her boyfriend, Ammar Wahid, told court that when he and Zainab started their relationship she warned him to stay away from her brother.
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“Be aware of my bro,” she wrote him in an email. “If sometimes wanna talk come in the library. And if my bro is around act like complete stranger … I (don’t) want to give him the slightest idea that we (are) friends.”
About a month after they started dating in secret, Zainab invited Wahid over to the family house when her parents were out. But Hamed found out and asked him to leave. He was polite about it, Wahid testified, but after that incident the family pulled Zainab out of school for several months in which she was barely allowed to leave her room.
The young couple managed to start seeing each other again in the spring of 2009, which is also when Zainab ran away to a women’s shelter. She told shelter workers, who testified Tuesday, that there was violence in the home and that she was afraid of her brother.
The day Zainab ran away, leaving a note saying she wanted to live her own life, Yahya called her other children and was worried for their safety, court heard. The kids were on their way home from school and asked someone on the street to call police because their lives were in danger, court heard in evidence from Montreal police Const. Anne-Marie Choquette. Choquette did not testify, but her evidence was admitted as an agreed statement of fact.
“Their mother was reported to be afraid for their lives because the oldest daughter Zainab had left the house and they did not know where she was,” according to Choquette. “The children were concerned about the reaction of their father to this information.”
Police accompanied the children home and Geeti told them about the incident after their late shopping trip. Sahar told the officers Hamed had slapped her, and both girls said they had witnessed violence against Zainab. The girls said they had no freedom and wanted to be able to do the same things as their friends. But Shafia arrived home as police were speaking with the children, and they clammed up, Choquette wrote.
Choquette thought there was “lots of evidence” to lay a criminal charge, but in Quebec that decision lies with child and family services, who decided to follow up in a few days. Child protection workers have not yet testified.
Zainab stayed at the shelter about two weeks and went home after her mother promised to facilitate a marriage between Zainab and Wahid, court heard.
But the hastily arranged wedding, which took place in mid-May while Shafia was in Dubai on business, was a disaster. No one from Wahid’s family attended, and a Shafia family drama culminated in Yahya fainting and crying, court has heard. Zainab’s mother and brother convinced Zainab to end the marriage for the sake of her family, Wahid said. They divorced the next day.
“Obviously we loved each other, so it hurt both of us,” Wahid told court Tuesday.
Emails from Zainab, entered as court exhibits, from June of that year make it clear she still cared deeply for Wahid, ending one note with the signoff “ur wife…and best friend Zainab.”
“One thing (I’m) really happy about is that it was my dream to marry u (and) I did it once,” she wrote on June 2. “Even one day if (something) happens to us like dead I (won’t) die with out my dream being full filled … We had an amazing love story 2gether.”
Later that month, when Shafia returned home from Dubai, he said he forgave her for marrying Wahid and even let her get a job and go back to her own school, Wahid said. But the Crown alleges that at the same time, Shafia was plotting to kill Zainab and trying to recruit relatives to help.
Court has heard it was also around that time that someone was conducting Internet searches – on a computer used mostly by Hamed – such as “where to commit a murder” and “can a prisoner have rights to sell his real estate.”
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