Honour on Trial Read online

  Deslauriers had seen Sahar at school with a boy but she was concerned about giving Tooba this information. The teacher and Sahar had already spoken on one occasion about bruises and scratches she had seen on the girl's arms and told her no one had a right to harm her. Deslauriers weighed how forthcoming she should be with Tooba.

  "I told her that no, she didn't kiss any boy. I didn't want Sahar to encounter any problems after our meeting," Deslauriers said. "The mother said to us that she did not accept that her daughter would have kissed a boy, as it was not falling within the parameters of her values."

  By June 2009, Sahar was in a full-blown relationship with Ricardo, a native of Honduras and about three years her senior. Zainab knew Ricardo from night school, where they were learning French, and had introduced him to her sister.

  Ricardo's nickname for Sahar was "Natasha." That's what she told him her name was when they first met and it was some time before she revealed her true name.

  One time he, too, noticed bruises on Sahar's leg and arm. She said she had fallen at school but Ricardo wasn't buying her story. He thought the marks looked like they had been produced by a blow — "like when somebody hits you." Sahar never told Ricardo the same stories of abuse she had told her teachers. All he knew was that their relationship had to be a secret, owing, he thought, to their religious differences.

  Their time together was also limited by the curfews Sahar's parents had placed on their children. She was frustrated and hatched a plan with Ricardo to run away to Honduras and live with his family — even though he realized his Catholic parents would be as upset about his marrying a Muslim as Sahar's would be about her seeing a Catholic.

  One person who learned of the depth of Sahar's concern about her parents was Ricardo's aunt, Erma Medina. For quite a while, Medina also believed Sahar's name was Natasha, until the girl told her otherwise. She wanted to know more about this beautiful young woman her nephew was dating, and one day she asked Sahar about her home life.

  Sahar told Medina that "the day her parents knew about her relationship with Ricardo she would be a dead woman. She told me several times. All the time she was talking to me, she was serious."

  In April 2009, at a birthday gathering with Ricardo's family, Sahar had revealed she was going to tell her parents about her boyfriend and their plan to move to Honduras. Medina was asked in court why Sahar would do so, knowing it would cause serious trouble for her. "Because she loved Ricardo," the aunt replied. "She told me she would love him until death."

  There was a particularly close call one day as the couple was sitting in a restaurant with a girlfriend of Sahar's. In walked Sahar's younger brother, whose identity cannot be revealed due to a court publication ban.

  "I was embracing Sahar," Ricardo recalled. "When she saw he was coming she said to stop embracing her because this boy didn't know about our relationship. He arrived and he started to ask if Sahar was my girlfriend. Later I told him she wasn't my girlfriend — that we just met."

  Sahar looked scared. Her girlfriend told the brother that Ricardo was her boyfriend, not Sahar's. But that wasn't good enough. The boy was suspicious — and persistent.

  "He told me I had to prove it," said Ricardo, who described him as "really pressing, like a kid that needs candy."

  "I had to grab the other girl and kiss her in front of him."

  There was some normalcy when the two couples — Sahar and Ricardo, Zainab and Ammar — double-dated, occasionally going out to a movie or to a restaurant. One time, Sahar even introduced Ricardo to Geeti at school as her boyfriend. "She was normal. She didn't say anything," said Ricardo of the little sister.

  In court on November 29, 2011, Ricardo Sanchez was asked to read a sampling of the love texts he had sent to Sahar in the days and weeks before her death. They were recovered from Sahar's phone that was found in the Nissan Sentra after it was lifted from the bottom of the Rideau Canal.

  Ricardo sent one of the texts to her just two days before she set out on the family trip. "The only thing I would wish in this world is to have you every day of my life. The world is very large and one day I could even lose you," the young man read in Spanish. "But in this world as large as it is there's a small heart and you can never get lost in that one heart because it's only for you, my love."

  Ricardo was unable to read the entire message in the hushed courtroom without crying and stopping to control his emotions. Not a sound could be heard but the young man's quiet voice.

  In the darkness of the back seat of the Nissan the night of June 29, as they drove toward home along Highway 401, Sahar texted Ricardo to say she was with Rona, Zainab, and Geeti. They were just two or three hours away from Montreal but the decision had been made to stop at Kingston for the night.

  "Their father had told them they were gonna stop at a hotel because they were tired," Ricardo testified. "All she said was that she found it very strange they were in that car and their father was in a different car."

  Zainab's engagement…

  LATIF Hyderi made his courtesy phone call to Mohammad Shafia in Dubai in May 2009 — the father of the prospective groom paying his respects to the father of the bride and seeking permission to go ahead with the marriage arrangement. Everything seemed to be going well on the Montreal end. Tooba and Hamed were on board. The young people themselves seemed content. Hussain had a good management job at a Montreal grocery store. He could provide for Zainab. But what Latif heard over the phone from Dubai unnerved him.

  "I [had] asked her hand for Hussain and they agreed. We are waiting for your [Mohammad's] opinion," Latif recalled telling Shafia. "He said, 'Just wait until I come.' He was angry."

  Shafia, though indicating he was agreeable to the marriage, demanded that there be no contact between Zainab and Hussain for now.

  Latif was stung. "Your honour is my honour," he pointed out to Shafia. His son was willing to marry Zainab who had shamed the family with her broken marriage to Ammar. Latif and his family, in other words, were doing Shafia a favour.

  Shafia was preoccupied with Zainab's behaviour. Latif couldn't believe what he heard next. "He said, 'If I was there, I would have killed her.'"

  Latif was perplexed. "Why do you want to do that? She is a child," he told Shafia. "Children make mistakes. Don't show yourself [to be] that angry. Your problem is solved." One way of restoring honour¹ to the family is by marrying the "offending" woman off. The marriage is supposed to be with the person who violated her honour — even if she has been raped by him — but marrying the woman to someone else is an acceptable alternative.

  According to Latif, Shafia could not be appeased. When Latif persisted in seeking permission for the marriage arrangement, Shafia accused the older man of trying to get at his wealth through marriage.

  "I said, 'I have no eyes for your money. It's just for the humanity of this girl and the honour of this girl,'" Latif replied.

  According to Latif's account, Shafia abruptly hung up the phone. They never talked again about the matter.

  "I was worried why Shafia … he's talking this way," Latif said.

  Latif decided to go to Tooba's brother, Ahmed Javid, who lived in the same area of Montreal. Ahmed arranged for Tooba to come to his house for a meeting with Latif. Latif insisted that she come alone. He felt biased information was getting to Shafia. "Shafia used to get the message very fast," he said. "That's why I wanted to talk to Tooba alone. I had suspicion of Hamed."

  When Hamed appeared for the meeting with his mother, Latif decided to tackle the problem head-on. He sat Hamed down on the verandah for a talk. You're really a good boy, he told Hamad, but your family is fixed on too many old traditions. He also knew that Hamed had too much control over the girls, including Zainab, who was older than her brother. "You have five sisters," Latif said. "You should make yourself friends to your sisters. You should work with your sister[s] like a close friend.

  Latif decided to send a message to Shafia through the son: Lighten up. Let the sisters go to parties. Let them
associate freely with friends.

  "Maybe your father doesn't understand the environment," Latif told him. "Your sisters can't watch TV. They're like political prisoners. This is completely against humanity, against the situation in this country."

  Latif said Hamed listened quietly as they sat on the front porch. In a few days, the young man would pack his black suitcase and fly off to join his father in Dubai for 12 days.

  1 http://www.meforum.org/50/honor-murders-why-the-perps-get-off-easy

  Rona's life…

  WHILE the Shafia girls were feeling the heavy hand of parental control in June of 2009, pressure was building on Rona. Isolation was increasing inside the household and she had no network of friends in Montreal.

  When Rona first came to Canada in November 2007, the Hyderis invited her to their house, along with Tooba and Shafia, for the traditional meal given to travellers. Latif told her to consider him her "paternal uncle."

  "You can always come to our house. Don't feel isolated that you have no brother or sister here or no parents here," he recalled telling her. "She became very happy when I told her these things."

  The Hyderis didn't have much contact with Rona after that, except to see her when she walked past their home on her many endless, solitary walks, in all seasons and all weather.

  One day, on leaving their apartment building, they were surprised to find Tooba outside with one of the children. "Don't talk to Rona," Latif recalled her saying. "Don't talk to Rona at all." The Hyderis could only come to one conclusion about this unsettling demand — things were happening in the Shafia household that someone didn't want known.

  The Hyderis would walk in a neighbourhood park also frequented by Rona. It would later be revealed that she used a pay telephone there to make secret calls to supportive friends and family members. The Hyderis would say hello but felt uncomfortable since Tooba had confronted them. "There are always problems in their house," Latif told his wife. "We should give up coming to this park."

  One day, however, Latif was alone in the park and met Rona. "She said, 'I wanted to talk to you. I have a problem I want to talk to you about if you will listen to me. There is a lot of cruelty and oppression practised on me by Tooba and Shafia. They beat me two or three times. I am as their servant, not a wife,'" Latif testified in court.

  Tooba and Shafia had her immigration documents. She was constantly uncertain of her legal status in Canada. Rona didn't realize it, but the Montreal immigration lawyer Shafia had hired to handle her case also had concerns.

  Sabine Venturelli, like everyone else outside the family, believed Rona Amir Mohammad to be Shafia's cousin. Twice, she had arranged to have Rona's visitor's visa extended. The last one was due to expire on August 30, 2009, and this time, if she was instructed by Shafia to proceed, Venturelli would file for Rona's permanent immigrant status based on humanitarian grounds.

  What Venturelli recalled in court was that Rona never appeared at her office without one or both Shafias and a female relative being there as well. Shafia always paid for the work with cash. By spring of 2009, Venturelli hadn't been contacted by anyone about Rona's case since the previous November.

  What the jury never heard was that Shafia, through his female relative, had sent an offer to Venturelli to close the file — for a fee of $10,000. The closure likely would have resulted in Rona's being sent out of Canada. The lawyer never accepted this exorbitant sum and never performed the work. At the time of Rona's death, the file was still active at Venturelli's office and with Canadian immigration.

  Rona's isolation was also increasing. According to her confidantes, the children were ordered not to talk to her. Rona said she confronted Shafia about his treatment of her. Rona was also calling her brother and sister in Europe, from the park, to ask for their advice. Her sister, Diba Masoomi, told her to divorce Shafia and come live with her in France.

  Latif Hyderi was at a loss as to how to advise Rona. "I saw that I couldn't help her," he recalled. "I told Rona, 'My sister, do something.'"

  Rona was trying to do something. By talking to Latif, she may, in fact, have been acting on the advice of a woman in the United States who had become a close long-distance telephone confidante.

  Fahima Vorgetts never met Rona face to face but she did talk to her at least a hundred times in the year prior to Rona's death. Vorgetts's uncle was married to one of Rona's sisters. They became close through their telephone contacts — most of which occurred when Rona called from the phone booth in the park. She told Vorgetts that her phone time had been restricted in the home and that she was being ostracized. "Most of the time she would be crying a lot," said Vorgetts.

  Rona told her long-distance friend the story of how she had married Shafia at a young age and that her inability to have children had created a chasm between her and Shafia. "She was controlled from day one, then abused," Vorgetts recounted. Vorgetts believed Rona was in very real danger posed by Shafia and his temper.

  "She was afraid to stay. She was afraid to leave. He said he would find her and kill her. He did tell her many times that he will kill her. When he was abusing her, beating her up, he used that word," she said.

  Vorgetts is director of the Afghan Women's Fund, which supports organizations that educate women and children and assist with health issues, particularly concerning maternal and paediatric care. She became a feminist at the age of 10 after the fundamentalist Taliban took over Afghanistan and began imposing restrictions on women. Rona had talked to Vorgetts about getting out of the Shafia home and possibly moving to the U.S., or to Europe where she had family. She said she was seeking a divorce settlement from Shafia.

  "She was thinking about going to Europe, not to Afghanistan. As a divorcée, she would have a difficult time there," Vorgetts said. "A woman cannot live alone in Afghanistan. It's not uncommon, but it's looked down upon."

  The last time Vorgetts spoke to Rona was at the end of April 2009. "She was controlled. At the end of our conversations, she was convinced she should leave — that she should stand on her own feet," said Vorgetts.

  This was also the tumultuous period during which Zainab was in the women's shelter and the Shafia men were searching frantically to find her — before Tooba ultimately negotiated Zainab's return home.

  Vorgetts believes the girls were not just being rebellious teens but sending out cries for help. Otherwise, Vorgetts asked, why did Geeti shoplift if she had everything she needed, including lots of spending money? Why would a 13-year-old wear revealing clothes to school and get kicked out as a result? Why did Zainab make the decision to go to a women's shelter? "A happy girl would not want to be in a shelter. Shelters are very foreign to Afghanistan," said Vorgetts.

  Rona was witnessing firsthand with Zainab how breaking away from the family could upset the men in the household. Still, Vorgetts was trying to get her to report the abuse to police and to seek help at a Montreal church or mosque. "She said if she goes to the police her husband will kill her," said Vorgetts. "She took it seriously. Her husband told her he will kill her if she leaves."

  There were other reasons why Rona couldn't leave. "She loved the girls; she loved the children," Vorgetts said. "Another reason was, if she goes to the police, her husband threatened they would send her back to Afghanistan."

  Rona said Shafia knew people in Afghanistan who would find her and kill her.Vorgetts left for Afghanistan on May 1, 2009, returning to her home in Virginia on July 1, the day after Rona's body was found in the canal. Rona had called a number of times in that month-long interval. "There were desperate messages. It sounded like she was in big trouble," Vorgetts recalled.

  But Vorgetts had no way of contacting Rona. The year of calls from Montreal, sometimes coming two and three times a week, were all made by Rona from the pay phone in the park, using calling cards she bought with her allowance.

  Vorgetts tried to reach her through various relatives but never did.

  "I think the message did not get through to her," Vorgetts testified at the trial
. "Then I heard she was dead."

  Fazil's testimony…

  IT had been many years since Fazil Javid had seen his sister, Tooba. Now here they were, sitting face to face, 10 m apart, in the main courtroom of the Frontenac County Court House in Kingston. Javid had been flown in by the Crown to testify at his sister's murder trial. His testimony would play a significant role in the Shafia convictions.

  Sometime around the start of 2009, Tooba had started calling her brother in Sweden where he owned a pizzeria. She needed to speak to her brother on a regular basis "about the family problems in the home … She wanted to open up to me and talk about it," he told the court.

  Tooba's main concern, according to Fazil, was Zainab's desire to marry Ammar Wahid and the tension it was creating in the home. Fazil talked to his niece twice on the phone. In fact, he tried to convince Zainab to follow her parents' advice and not marry the young Pakistani man.

  They had a third encounter using Skype in April or May of 2009. "That was accidental," said Fazil. Zainab happened to be visiting Fazil's brother Ahmed at his home not far from the Shafias in Montreal. They talked to each other "maybe 10 minutes," recalled Fazil, coming close to tears on the witness stand. Sahar was also in the room with Zainab but wouldn't show herself on the computer's Web camera because she was too shy. Zainab explained to her uncle that she only wanted to marry Ammar to get away from her father.

  "She was not happy and she wanted to leave the house. That's what she told me," said Fazil. "The condition was so hard on her she wanted as soon as possible to leave the house."At age 19, Zainab described not being able to wear the clothes she wanted, being forced to wear the hijab, not allowed to go out with friends or even go to the library.

  "There was no permission for that. She wanted that freedom. She was fed up. She just wanted to marry," said Fazil. "There was one person and that was Mr. Shafia who was making the decisions."