Thread: Shafia Trial Verdict: Honour Killing Jury Finds All Accused Guilty Of First-Degree Mu

Shafia Trial Verdict: Honour Killing Jury Finds All Accused Guilty Of First-Degree Murder



KINGSTON, Ont. - Three members of an Afghanistan-born Montreal family were defiant Sunday in the face of life in prison and harsh condemnation for the murders of three daughters and a co-wife apparently motivated by what the judge called their "twisted concept of honour."

A jury took 15 hours to find Mohammad Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed, 21, each guilty of four counts of first-degree murder in a so-called mass honour killing that has captivated Canadians from coast to coast, and touched off post-911 criticism of Muslim culture.

The three immediately pronounced the verdicts as unjust, but the judge was unmoved, cutting right to the core of the cultural cloud that hung over this case.

"It is difficult to conceive of a more heinous, more despicable, more honourless crime," Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Maranger said.
"The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your completely twisted concept of honour...that has absolutely no place in any civilized society."

The trial heard evidence over many weeks about the bizarre divide in the Shafia family, in which the patriarch struck fear in the hearts of some of his children, though often being away on business Hamed acted as the surrogate disciplinarian. The three murdered daughters thumbed their noses at the family rules. The children they did not kill were the ones ratting out their sisters to their parents for bad behaviour, court heard.

It was notions of honour, directly tied to women's sexuality and general control over their behaviour, that led the Shafias to kill, court heard, in an effort to cleanse them of the shame they perceived their daughters to have brought upon them.

The concept is in stark contrast to Canadian values, the Crown said. The idea that such thinking had not only been brewing in one of Canada's most cosmopolitan cities, but that this "honour" apparently superseded the value of life for the Shafias has shocked many.

But investigators who pored over the details of the disturbing inner workings of the Shafia family and examined the tiniest pieces of evidence from the crime scene urged people Sunday to remember the victims.

All that sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, and Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, their father's childless first wife in a polygamous marriage wanted was freedom, and it cost them their lives, court heard.

Their bodies were found June 30, 2009, in a car submerged in a canal in Kingston, Ont., in a multiple murder the Crown asserted was committed to restore family honour, lost when the girls began dating and acting out. Rona was simply disposed of, the Crown said.

The jury's verdict indicates the seven women and five men believe Shafia, Yahya and Hamed plotted to kill their troublesome family members, dumping their bodies in a canal and staging it — albeit clumsily — to look like an accident.

The three now-convicted multiple murderers did not accept their fates quietly.

"We are not criminal, we are not murderer, we didn't commit the murder and this is unjust," Shafia said through an interpreter when the judge asked if he had anything to say.

Yahya, who spent a withering six days on the stand testifying in her own defence, was similarly assertive.

"Your honourable justice, this is not just," she said, also through an interpreter. "I am not a murderer, and I am a mother — a mother!"
Hamed said in English: "Sir, I did not drown my sisters anywhere."

During the three-month trial Hamed was the only one of the three never to betray any emotion, but as it became clear he could face life in prison, the young man put his head in his hands and hunched over in the prisoners' box while his parents rubbed his back. Yahya soon began to cry.

First-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no chance to apply for parole for 25 years. The family has been behind bars since their arrests on July 22, 2009.

Outside court, Crown attorney Gerard Laarhuis said the verdict is a reflection of Canadian values that he hopes will resonate.

"This jury found that four strong, vivacious and freedom-loving women were murdered by their own family in the most troubling of circumstances," he said.

"This verdict sends a very clear message about our Canadian values and the core principles in a free and democratic society that all Canadians enjoy and even visitors to Canada enjoy," Laarhuis said to cheers of approval from onlookers.

Laarhuis was interrupted in his remarks by Moosa Hadi, a central figure in the case who was a fervent supporter of the Shafias. He sent reporters and the lead investigator emails stating that the prosecution of the family was criminal and because of it he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

"This is a lie, this is absolutely a lie," Hadi shouted over Laarhuis before being pulled away by tactical police officers. "This is a miscarriage of the justice."

Members of the public listening to Laarhuis' statement, many of whom have attended the trial from the Oct. 20 start, shouted Hadi down and cheered as Laarhuis continued.

Lead investigator Det. Sgt. Chris Scott praised Crown lawyers for allowing the four women to finally be heard.

"They gave these victims a voice when they had none and so I appreciate their work," he said outside court.

In a statement following the verdict, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson called honour killings a practice that is "barbaric and unacceptable in Canada."

"This government is committed to protecting women and other vulnerable persons from all forms of violence and to hold perpetrators accountable for their acts."

Shafia's lawyer, Peter Kemp, said after the verdicts that he believes the comments his client made on wiretaps calling his dead daughters whores and saying there is no value of life without honour, may have weighed more heavily on the jury's minds than the physical evidence in the case.

"He wasn't convicted for what he did," Kemp said. "He was convicted for what he said."

Hamed's lawyer, Patrick McCann, said he was disappointed with the verdict, and said his client will appeal and he believes the other two will as well.

"I still have a hard time understanding how the Crown theory could actually have happened," he said.

The Crown theory was that Shafia, Yahya and Hamed drowned the four victims either to the point of death or unconsciousness, placed their bodies in the car, then pushed it into the canal using the family's other vehicle. However, prosecutors couldn't prove how or where the pre-drowning happened.

The defence had said it was an accident, that they had gone for a joy ride with Zainab driving and accidentally plunged into the canal with Hamed watching, although he didn't call police. Hamed's lawyer told the jury his client was only guilty of being stupid, but the jury clearly thought otherwise.
THE TRIAL, IN PHOTOS


Mohammad Shafia, centre, and his son Hamed Shafia, left, are led away from the Frontenac County courthouse in Kingston, Ont., Sunday, January 29, 2011, after being found guilty of first degree murder. (Graham Hughes, CP)

"We are not criminal, we are not murderer, we didn't commit the murder and this is unjust," Mohammad said after the verdict was announced.

Shafia Trial Verdict: Honour Killing Jury Finds All Accused Guilty Of First-Degree Murder

These large immigrant groups hostile to the laws and customs of the nations they are flooding into is nothing more than pure Balkanization.

Multiculturalism is being forced down our throats in the name of 'diversity,' and history is replete with examples of fallen nations overrun by foreigners hostile to the host nation who eventually caused those nations to self-destruct.

Canada came very close to allowing special Sharia Islamic Law courts to be set up in the large Canadian cities. So far the Muslims have not been successful, but like illegal aliens chipping away at immigration laws, they will eventually get it.

International Campaign Against Shari'a Court in Canada

Justice Robert Maranger and Jury did their duties well by finding Shafia’s Family guilty of murder. Now it is the society’s duty to complete the task and put an end to honor Killing by enforcing integration rather than multiculturalism.

This is one of the bigger challenges America will face in coming years is the left who is determine to destroy American culture will stop at nothing which includes uncontrolled immigration to obtain there radical socialist/communist utopia/

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Originally Posted by nomas

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It isn't just this group trying to brain wash our kids this is just another group that noticed how we let it happen. After all the idea has worked so well in the past on our children each enemy will try to exploit our weakness. In reality it has been going on for years in our school systems with the help of our educators and our socialistic propagandists government. The sheeple just continue to sleep through it and allow it to happen to their/our children. Then they wonder why society is the way it is and ignore all the warnings from who ever tries to say it, even to point of saying they are gooks.

This is a very informative film we need to listen to it. Now this is what an immigrant should be about. This is why immigrants wanted to come to our Country in the first place, for the freedom they graved. There are many immigrants who recognize how our freedoms are being taken away not just this lady. They are noticing their children being brainwashed and indoctrinated by other interests they don't like it it is why they ran from where they came from to begin with.. Isn't time for the sheeple in America to wake up???? This is the kind of immigrant we need here not these misfits that sneak into our Country illegally and expect free things.....This is what America was about we seem to have lost our way and we need to wake up..

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This is a powerful, must see video.

Yes excellentvideo - must view

Honor killings' in Canada: 5 responses to the Shafia verdict

1. 'Honor killings' deserve harsher penalty than first-degree murder

Opinion Editorial by Canadian news agency the QMI Agency, and published in the Calgary Sun.

“The Shafia case, despite its high profile, was approximately the 14th murder case in recent years where so-called "family honour" was the toxin behind the murder of innocents.

While first-degree murder convictions deal out the harshest penalty Canada has to offer, the Harper government might consider adding a dangerous offender designation to "honour killing" convictions — just to ensure they never draw a breath of air outside a prison.

It should also do something about the red flags that went ignored, by the police and by social service agencies, when the Shafia children tried to seek safety and refuge.

Canada must protect such ... young people who come to our shores and want to be part of this country — not the country that they fled, and the brutal customs back home.

Canada should mean belonging, and assimilating.”

2. No religious community has monopoly on violence against women

Editorial, The Toronto Star

“The case so shocked Canada’s Muslim community that prominent leaders and scholars felt moved to decry the fiction that Islam condones such mistreatment of women. 'Murder is … haram (prohibited) to the severest degree,' warned Imam Sikander Ziad Hashmi of the Islamic Society of Kingston, 'and cannot be justified in any way.' That message was firmly reinforced by imams in mosques across the nation.

To be sure, no religious or social community has a monopoly on violence against women. The hundreds of shelters across Canada for abused women and children are proof enough that this blight cuts across religious and cultural borders.

But the Shafia case struck a nerve with Muslims because Mohammad Shafia sought to justify murder on the grounds that the women 'betrayed us,' 'betrayed Islam,' and betrayed 'our (family) honour.' As the trial showed, it was Shafia, his wife and son who betrayed both their faith and their family by terrorizing those close to them, stooping to violence and then lying under oath.”

3. Wider questions on immigration policy in Canada

Opinion Editorial, The Globe and Mail, Sheema Khan

“The Shafia trial raises wider questions about our immigration policy.

Tooba Yayha [the step-mother of three of the victims] denied ever hearing the term 'honour killing'. Yet, her older sister, Sorayah, approved killing for the sake of honour, telling La Presse’s Michèle Ouimet in Kabul that 'if someone committed a shameful act, they deserved to be eliminated'. Her son agreed, adding 'Afghans are right to kill in the name of honour.' Her husband added that if his daughters dared to ruin his honour, he would 'put them in a sack, and eliminate them so that no one could find a trace of them.' Clearly, there are some who are unapologetic, standing firmly behind such a heinous practice. Of these, a few migrate with such pathological thinking, unwilling to change.

Yet, the majority of immigrants arrive with the desire to build a better future. Yet, are they fully aware of the differences between their traditional culture and the freedoms afforded by a liberal democratic society? Are they willing to accept the reality that their children will be influenced by the host culture? What are we doing to educate potential immigrants about these fundamental differences?”

4. If it’s about honor, why lie?

Opinion Editorial by Sally Armstrong in The Ottawa Citizen

“[C]uriously, those who defend their cultural right to murder their women even in countries that allow it, invariably rely on a coverup, a tapestry of lies and the wailing presumption of innocence….

And this is indeed the point — a dishonest response to a vile act. If pushing a car occupied by your children and first wife into a canal so they will drown is an act of honour ... how do the keepers of the honour key pretend the death was an accident? If it’s all about family honour, how come it’s a secret?

Invariably, those who defend honour killing and other harms associated with women and girls are quick to challenge a critic with 'This is our culture, our religion; it’s none of your business.' But when culture and religion are hijacked by political opportunists, when misogyny is passed off as 'our way,' when women and girls are denied an education, denied access to health care, exposed to daily rations of violence, then surely it is the obligation of everyone to speak out, to say, what is happening here is not cultural, it is criminal.”

5. The jury got it wrong

Opinion Editorial by Jonathan Kay, comment page editor, in the National Post

“No doubt, there are nuances of the case that will be lost on anyone except a juror or other courtroom eyewitness. But based on what I do know, I think the jury made the wrong decision in regard to at least one of the defendants: In particular, I simply can’t see how there was no 'reasonable doubt' about the involvement of Tooba Yahya, the mother.

Even the case against father Mohammad Shafia seems less than airtight.... I never saw any proof that he actively conspired with his son in the murder plot.... He is clearly a thoroughly loathsome human specimen who no one in the free world should miss. My gut sense is that this, as opposed to any specific evidence of his culpability, is the main reason he was convicted of murder.

That isn’t how our justice system is supposed to work. Even the most horrible people are supposed to be allowed to walk free if the state can’t definitively prove that they committed a specific crime.

One counterargument … is that the Shafia killings were 'honour killings,' which, by definition, are always a family affair. I’m sorry, but I don’t buy this. Yes, this was indeed an 'honour killing.' But even so, our Western system of criminal justice is based on the concept of individual guilt. And you cannot short-circuit the need to prove an individual defendant’s direct personal complicity by throwing the term 'honour killing' against a clan, and then hoping to get an up-or-down verdict on the whole lot of them at once.

Hamed Shafia killed his sisters and his step-mother. Of that much, I am quite sure. But from where I stand, his mother and father should have been acquitted.”

'Honor killings' in Canada: 5 responses to the Shafia verdict - 'Honor killings' deserve harsher penalty than first-degree murder - CSMonitor.com