Honour on Trial Page 13

  "I was not happy with seeing this picture. I didn't think of my children this way. I never expected my children [would do] this thing. My children did a lot of cruelty toward me," he said. "I'm not sure if the mom knew about this. They hid this from me. I swore because I did not expect this thing from my children."

  Shafia was asked to explain why he would exhort the devil to shit on the graves of his dead daughters. "Yes, I heard it in the court," he replied. "To me it means the devil will go out and check their graves."?When he called the girls filthy, he said, "I was actually cursing myself. I was swearing at myself."

  Then Shafia offered interesting takes on the conversations he had with Fazil Javid and Latif Hyderi. He said he never tried to engage Fazil in a plot to kill Zainab because "the minute he said it was Fazil, I hung up on him. Not even two seconds. I turned if off."

  He was suspicious of the uncle's call. "Latif was the one who cancelled this marriage [to Ammar Wahid] and basically forced my daughter to withdraw," he charged.

  Kemp reminded Shafia that he sounded "quite angry" in the wiretaps. He admitted that he was upset because "Zainab, she didn't accept my words, and Sahar, because I saw those pictures."

  Shafia then insisted that both cars and all 10 people went to the Kingston East Motel the night of the deaths and that Zainab came and asked Tooba for the keys to the Nissan.

  "She gave the key. Rona was behind her," he said.

  Most importantly, perhaps, he said he never realized where the four had died until he and Tooba and Hamed went there with police on July 18, 2009. "I didn't know this area Kingston Mills by its name."

  It was also during this day of examination that Shafia insisted he was travelling alone to Montreal on July 27 when, nearing Kingston, he got a phone call to return to Niagara Falls.

  When it was her turn to question him, Crown attorney Laurie Lacelle wanted Shafia to explain his treatment of Rona, suggesting his first wife had become Tooba's servant.

  "I beg you, dear respected lady," said Shafia, "she was a member of my family. In all my life I spent more money for her than for Tooba." Shafia insisted Rona was referred to as his cousin only for immigration purposes. He said the children had never been told to hide the true relationship. "The children knew her as their aunt," he said.

  As for the wiretaps, Lacelle highlighted the difference between how Shafia spoke of his daughters and how he talked to Hamed when, as the two of them sat in a police cruiser under arrest, Shafia said to his son: "I commend you to God."

  "You never said that to your daughters, did you?" Lacelle pointed out. "You said, may the devil shit on their graves."

  Shafia said he found the photos of the girls in underwear and with boyfriends upsetting. "I was not happy with this. They hid this from me," he said. "The pictures when she was in the laps of boys. I saw these pictures. They were bad pictures."

  Again, echoing the expert testimony of Shahrzad Mojab, Shafia placed the blame for Zainab's troubles squarely on his daughter's actions. "She destroyed her life because she didn't listen to our advice," he said matter-of-factly.

  Lacelle's cross-examination went into a second day. She grilled Shafia about the trip to Niagara Falls and why Hamed's cellphone was recorded being used off the Westbrook Road tower west of Kingston right in the middle of the vacation. Hamed was never without his cellphone, so police believed he participated in a scouting mission that took the pair to Kingston Mills.

  "On the 27th it was me alone," Shafia now acknowledged. During interrogation, Shafia had been silent on the matter. "Hamed was not with me," he stated.

  Lacelle wanted to know why the family started out so late from Niagara Falls on June 29 to return to Montreal. Checkout from the first room was 11:06 am but they didn't leave the second room until 6:46 pm, "even though everyone was ready to go. You decided to start a seven- or eight-hour trip at night?"

  "That was the decision everyone made," Shafia responded.

  "I suggest you started that trip late at night because you wanted those kids to be asleep when you got to Kingston," Lacelle countered.

  "When you are tired you can go to sleep," Shafia said. "[It] wasn't the intention for the children to go to sleep."

  Lacelle moved on to the scene in Kingston, Shafia insisting that when he and Hamed went to find a motel that Tooba was sitting with the car just a short distance up Highway 15.

  Lacelle accused Mohammad, Tooba, and Hamed of killing the women.

  "We never gave permission to ourselves," he said. "All of our children came to the hotel. We never allowed ourselves to do this … The mom would be the first to complain. How is it possible someone would do that to their children?"

  "You might do that if you thought they were whores," Lacelle said.

  He only considered Zainab and Sahar to be that way, Shafia answered, after seeing the suggestive photographs after their deaths. "The two others, they were innocent and one was just a child."

  Shafia also dismissed the wiretaps, even what sounded like concern for the possibility that cameras might have recorded their actions at Kingston Mills. "I wish there was a camera," he told Lacelle. "We have no worry about the camera. Whatever evidence could be found about my children I would be happy about that … I wish there was a camera so we would not be in this trouble."

  When Shafia was recorded saying the girls "messed up," he said it was directed at Zainab's taking the car for a joyride. "This is a bad thing she did," he said, "take the car key without permission."

  Despite Shafia, Tooba, and Hamed's having told police on several occasions that Zainab was prone to taking the car keys and driving the Nissan, Shafia had this to say: "If we knew they will do such a thing and take the key and drive, if I knew that, I would have prevented that action." Yet Tooba allegedly turned over the keys to her untrustworthy daughter without hesitation.

  Lacelle had a theory why Shafia was vehement that he would repeat his actions even if they hoisted him onto the gallows. "You chose to kill them," she said.

  Shafia replied that murdering his daughters and first wife would not do anything to restore honour. "For me, anyone who kills a child or daughter, that person really becomes shameless," Shafia reasoned. "I don't call that honour."

  The defence lawyers finished their re-examinations of Shafia around noon on Friday, December 9. They told the court that on Monday they would call two of the surviving Shafia children to testify. As it turned out, only one of them, the son, would be called to the stand.

  A son testifies…

  HIS appearance that morning had a dramatic effect on Shafia and Tooba. Now 18, he was just 15 the night of July 21, 2009, when police arrived at the rue Bonnivet home to take him and his two sisters into protective custody. He was a young man now, waving shyly to his parents as he took his seat in the witness stand. When he was sworn into court, the sound of his voice caused his parents to cry.

  Before examination by Peter Kemp began, court watched a long interview from the night of July 21, at a Montreal police station, between the 15-year-old and Kingston Police detective Sean Bambrick, a specialist in the child physical and sex abuse unit. On the tape, Bambrick questions the boy about all the tumult in the house prior to the Niagara Falls vacation.

  Then Bambrick gets him to recount events from the night of June 29-30. He is vague about what took place that night because he was sleeping in the Lexus, but did remember it was precisely 1:53 am when his father woke him up to go into the motel. Then he gave more details.

  "He gave me the keys and he was, like, in 18, he told me 18, so I just entered 18 with my sister … and my little sister … and, yeah, we entered the room and we fell asleep."

  He vaguely remembers someone coming to him while he was in bed, maybe a sister or his mother, and asking for his cellphone. The phone was no longer operating as a phone but the children used it to listen to music. The next morning, they heard their parents talking about family members being missing. He assumed it was Zainab because she had run away before.


  As the interview continues, the boy tells Bambrick he can't believe his parents and brother would kill his sisters and Rona. Bambrick asks him if he can recall anyone leaving Niagara Falls while the family was staying there. The boy says that, yes, Hamed and his father went to Toronto to open a bank account related to Shafia's car import business in Dubai.

  The boy also talks about the family's trip to Niagara Falls the previous year, in 2008, when they were pulled over at Napanee by Ontario Provincial Police for having all 10 family members in the Lexus. The vehicle was impounded. While Hamed and Shafia took a train back to Montreal to get the van, the rest of the family stayed in a hotel in Kingston. This established for police that the Shafias, even going back a year, had some familiarity with Kingston.

  The boy tells the officer that if he thought his parents were involved in a murder conspiracy, he would be the first to turn them in. He portrays himself as the one who stood up to his father when there were family arguments and that he would absorb the physical abuse, particularly during one incident when the children came home late from the mall one night.

  "You know, like, I would do the most arguing," he tells Bambrick. "The first time, I was the one who called the cops, you know."

  As the video played in the courtroom, the young man began taking notes, preparing for his testimony. It began with questioning by Kemp who addressed the issue of violence in the Shafia home. The young man said that even though his father hit them, it was because he was worried for their safety and that, by the end of these confrontations, they all "understood why he got mad."

  On the matter of Zainab's disappearance on April 17, 2009, he completely changed his story from a previous police interview. He had admitted in the video interview that he was the one who called police because the children feared their father's reaction and felt they weren't safe. Now, in court, the young man said none of that was true, suggesting that even the investigating police officers thought they were "joking" with them.

  He also downplayed the investigations by child protection workers at the school in both 2008 and 2009. "The teachers felt we were victims and we were abused at home," he told the court. He now said it was a game they played to win sympathy at school and get out of having to do school work. In fact, he said, there was no tension at 8644 rue Bonnivet.

  "Sahar was very happy at home," he testified. "It was a very happy, joyful [family], enjoying life. It was just some of the stories we told the teachers for special treatment." The young man said he only learned of Sahar's boyfriend "after her death," despite testimony by Ricardo Sanchez stating they had met.

  "The last time I saw the guy — what's his name — I saw him on the news," he testified. "I never saw him before."

  He said that Zainab would receive drunken calls from Ammar Wahid, ordering her "to get money from the rest of us."

  The young man became the go-between for Zainab and her mother when Zainab was in the shelter. "She was having second thoughts," he testified. "She told me she regretted leaving home and it wasn't the way she thought it would be … She thought there would be room service."

  And he accused his great-uncle, Latif Hyderi, of bullying Zainab into marrying his son, Hussain, on the day her marriage to Wahid was dissolved. "Latif told her, didn't ask her, you're going to marry my son now. Zainab was crying," he recalled. By the time they returned home that day, Latif "was making arrangements and setting dates already."

  His recollections now were much clearer about what happened after they checked into the Kingston East Motel. "I wasn't actually asleep. I was lying down," he said. "After a few minutes, I remember Zainab coming in and asking for my cellphone."

  Kemp pointed out that, in the video interview, he hadn't been so certain. "When I think about it, I can clearly say it was Zainab," he said.

  The young man also said Zainab was eager to drive and that he once had to convince her, when the two of them were driving around the motel parking lot in Niagara Falls, not to take the Nissan out onto the street. "Zainab really wanted to get her driver's licence," he said.

  The young man also took responsibility for one of the Google searches on the laptop computer, the one titled, "where to commit murder."

  "When I was suicidal, I was trying to find ways and I would search stuff on the Internet like that. I wasn't familiar with the term suicide. I thought murder was the same thing," he said.

  In Islam, suicide is strictly forbidden as it is an affront to God, who is the only one who can determine life and death. Yet in the pre-trial interviews, and at the trial, the subject of suicide comes up often in relation to the Shafia children. Statistics tell us that suicide is the third leading cause of death among 15-to-24-year-olds, and the sixth leading cause of death among 5-to-14-year-olds. Teenagers often experience overwhelming feelings of stress, confusion, and self-doubt, along with other fears while growing up. For some teens, suicide may appear to be a solution to their problems. For the Shafia children, stress levels were often very high, as evidenced by their fear of their father and their many pleas for help to teachers and outside agencies.

  On the next morning of the trial, Crown attorney Gerard Laarhuis accused the young man of fabricating the story about being at the motel room.

  "Zainab never came to the room asking for a phone," said the attorney. "I am just putting it to you. Do you agree?"

  "No, I don't," he answered.

  Laarhuis said it was actually his mother asking for the phone so they could call Hamed who was on his way to Montreal in the middle of the night. "The story was supposed to be [that] Zainab came and asked for the keys. You got mixed up. You said she came and asked for a cellphone."

  Laarhuis then presented evidence from a police wiretap from the night of July 21, when the young man, just taken out of the home along with his sisters, called Hamed. Laarhuis said it was clear from their conversation that he was trying to assure Hamed that he'd given no information to police.

  "You didn't want to help the police find the truth did you?" Hamed asked him.

  "I told him [Hamed] everything I knew," he replied. "I'm telling him to say what happened. Tell the police what happened."

  It's also clear that by the time of this recorded conversation with Hamed, the young man knows and understands the word "suicide." He is pleading with his brother not to make matters worse.

  "Don't do anything stupid. 'Cause, Hamed, [if] you guys think of suicide and all that, don't do it, okay?" he tells him. "Look, Hamed, you are 100% caught," he continues.

  Hamed warns him to be careful about what he says because the phone may be bugged. In court, Laarhuis accused the young man of already knowing at that point how his sisters and Rona died and who did it.

  "The only issue in your mind during this phone conversation was whether police had enough proof," said Laarhuis.

  "Enough false proof, yes," he countered.

  When the call ends at 3:04 in the morning, Shafia asks Hamed what the police were saying to the younger children and how they responded.

  "They said, police from Kingston came and said [they have] 100% proof that the Lexus vehicle hit [the Nissan] from the back," Hamed tells his father. "They [said], for example, uh, we know what happened, why it happened. They asked him lots of things. He said we said the same things."

  "[What] they saw in the hotel?" Shafia asks.

  "Yeah," says Hamed.

  Laarhuis would return to the young man's suicidal feelings, which seemed to heighten around the April 17 when Zainab left the home for the shelter. Yet he couldn't recall the incident in which Sahar had taken pills herself and reported her feelings to school officials and youth protection workers.

  "Sahar wasn't suicidal," he said, chalking it up to one of the pranks they played on their teachers. He said the intent of his Google search for "where to commit a murder" was really meant to be how to murder yourself.

  "This wasn't some random group of words," Laarhuis suggested.

  Even after admitting he read Rona's diary, describing
how bitter her life was, the young man described her as being happy and having "many friends."

  "Where do you draw the line," Laarhuis asked him, "on manipulating people and telling lies?"

  "When it goes too far, I guess," was his answer.

  Laarhuis pointed out to the young man that in his testimony he made significant changes to the stories he told police three years earlier. "Where your memory has improved, it's all to the benefit of your mom and dad and Hamed," said the lawyer. "Where your memory hasn't improved are [the] things that aren't helpful to your parents."

  The trial continues…

  AS the trial broke for Christmas on December 14, it was unclear whether Tooba and Hamed would be called to testify in the New Year. The non-communication order preventing the Shafias from talking to their children in Montreal was vacated after being in place for three years. Then lawyer Patrick McCann told the court that his client Hamed Shafia would take the stand.

  When the trial resumed on January 9, 2012, it wasn't Hamed but his mother, Tooba, who made her way to the witness stand. Tooba's lawyer, David Crowe, led her through her early life. Born in Kabul, Tooba said she came from a family of 16 children. Her father, a pharmacist who owned three drug stores in the city, had 10 sons and six daughters with two wives. Her father's first wife died of breast cancer and Tooba's mother was a divorcée. Most of her siblings were university-educated with professional jobs. Tooba only got to Grade 7 because life was interrupted by the war in Afghanistan. She was home-schooled before being married to Shafia in 1988.

  Tooba confirmed that before their family left Dubai for Canada in 2007, there had been an agreement reached with the children. "We decided that until the child graduated, they are not allowed to have a girlfriend or boyfriend or get married," she told the court. There was no physical punishment in the home except the single time Shafia slapped the children when they came home late.