On June 30, 2009, a Parks Canada worker noticed an oil slick forming on the surface of the water in lock near Kingston, Ont. At the bottom of the lock was a black Nissan Sentra containing the bodies of three sisters, Zainab Shafia, 19, Sahar Shafia, 17, and Geeti Shafia, 13, as well Rona Amir Mohammed, 53.
A few hours later, Mohammad Shafia and Tooba Mohammad Yahya turned up at a Kingston police station to report his three daughters and a female cousin missing. Shafia told police his daughters sometimes went joyriding.
A month later, police charged Shafia, his wife, Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed, 21, with four counts of first-degree murder. Police also revealed that Rona Amir Mohammed was believed to be Shafia’s first wife in a polygamous marriage.
Police said the family had been travelling from Niagara Falls to Montreal in two vehicles when the women were killed.
What the Crown has argued
The Crown says this case is a so-called “honour killing” carried out to restore the reputation of a family sullied by the alleged rebellious behavior of three sisters who took boyfriends and had provocative pictures of themselves on their cellphones and a first wife who openly talked of divorce.
The Crown says the car containing the four women was pushed into the canal by the Shafia family’s other car, a Lexus SUV.
The Crown says the four victims were either unconscious or already dead in the Nissan when someone positioned the car in front of the lock, rolled down the window, got out and put the vehicle into drive.
AERIAL PHOTO OF LOCK |
When the car wouldn’t go into the canal on its own, the Crown says, either Shafia or his son got behind the wheel of their SUV and nudged the Nissan into the canal. That left dents on both vehicles. Pieces of the Lexus’s broken headlight were found not far from where the Nissan dropped into the canal.
“Shafia, Tooba and Hamed decided there was a diseased limb on their family tree,” Crown Attorney Laurie Lacelle explained in her closing arguments. “Their solution was to remove the diseased limb in its entirety and to prune the tree back to the good wood.”
To back up the “honour killing” theory, the Crown introduced wiretap evidence of Shafia calling his daughters “treacherous” and “whores” and saying that when he sees the pictures of his daughters on their cellphones, “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.”
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The Crown painted a picture of an abusive household in which the three sisters who died feared for their safety and that Sahar Shafia had told school officials she was facing physical, emotional and verbal abuse at home, and that she had taken pills to try to kill herself.
The Crown also addressed the timeline of events of the night the four women died.
Cellphone tower signals place Sahar’s phone around Highways 401 and 15 in Kingston at 1:36 a.m. Shafia and his son, Hamed, checked in to a motel at around 2 a.m., according to the motel manager. The manager said he saw only their Lexus SUV and not the Nissan.
The Crown argued that left enough time to drop the Nissan with the victims, accompanied by Yahya, at the locks while the men drop their three other children off at the motel.
The men return to the locks to carry out the murders, she said. Shafia’s cellphone was in Montreal at 6:48 a.m. He would have had to leave Kingston around 3:45 to get to Montreal at that time, if he drove the speed limit.
Lacelle said that would leave at least an hour and a quarter to kill the four women.
What the defence has argued
The defence disputes the Crown’s theory that this case is an “honour killing.”
The defence argues the deaths were an accident, which occurred after eldest daughter Zainab took the keys to the family’s Nissan sedan and went on a joyride with her sisters and Amir. Mohammad Shafia and his wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, said they were at their Kingston motel when the car went into the lock and they didn’t hear about it until the next day.
Peter Kemp, the lawyer representing Mohammad Shafia told the jury during closing arguments that there was no issue between his client and Zainab before the family went on a trip to Niagara Falls. The deaths occurred during the family’s return journey.
Kemp said Shafia had forgiven his daughter for a brief marriage to a man the family did not approve of and for seeking protection at a women’s shelter in April 2009. This, Kemp argued, was no honour killing.
“Honour killings are not permitted in Islam,” he told the jury.
“If you comb through the Qur’an, you would not find a single passage that advocates honour killing … but, there are plenty of prohibitions against murder.”
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He also disputed evidence that the Crown entered alleging an abusive household that the three teenaged girls wanted to escape.
Kemp said at no time did any of the school officials and other professionals seem concerned enough to call police.
The children were not removed from the home, he said, even though children’s services had attended the Shafia home.
Kemp also disputed the timeline of events, arguing that there was not enough time to drown each of the four victims, place their bodies in a car, push it into the lock and get back to the motel where Shafia and Hamed were seen at around 2:30 a.m.
There are too many unanswered questions, Kemp noted, to convict his client of murder.
Hamed Shafia Credit: Sean Kilpatrick, CP Photo |
Hamed Shafia had initially denied knowing what happened in the early morning hours of June 30, 2009. But four months later he changed his story in an interview with a man his father had hired as a private investigator.
After the family got to the motel around 1:30 a.m., Hamed testified in November, Geeti and Sahar stayed in the car, Zainab wanted to take it for a spin and Rona Mohammad wanted to find somewhere that sold phone cards. He was concerned about their safety because Zainab was inexperienced and did not have a driver’s licence, so he followed them in the family’s other car, a Lexus SUV, he said.
They drove all the way to the Kingston Mills locks, where Hamed rear-ended them because he was following too closely and they braked suddenly, he said. Pieces of the Lexus headlight fell on the ground, he said. Hamed was urging them to make a U-turn so they could return to the motel, when all of a sudden the car went into the water, he said.
So he sounded the horn of the Lexus, then got a rope, he said.
“I put the rope a few times in the water … nothing happened,” Hamed said. “I moved it a little bit to see if they take it.”
After receiving no response to the jiggling rope, Hamed got in his car and left, driving through the night to Montreal, about three hours away. He didn’t call police or tell his parents because he thought he would get in trouble for allowing Zainab to drive, he said.
What the judge told the jury
Superior Court judge Robert Maranger told the jury – in his 240-page charge to the jury – that what happened on June 30, 2009 “was either an accident or an intentional act that was made to look like an accident.”
He said the jury has three options for any or all of the accused:
- Guilty of first-degree murder, which means it was deliberate and planned ahead of time.
- Guilty of second-degree murder, which means it was deliberate but not planned.
- Not guilty.
The judge went into detail about the evidence presented by a police reconstruction expert who examined the Nissan that was pulled out of the lock as well as the Lexus SUV, that had damage to the front end.
That expert concluded that the Nissan was probably pushed into the water by the other vehicle.
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