Deaths of four Afghan women in Kingston "an honor killing"

[OldSolduer]

Justice has been done.

Our job is to educate Canadians that this crime will not be tolerated.

 

[GAP]

Now for the much larger problem...................losing the attitude that "women are property"............That's a far, far larger problem than honor killings....

 

[OldSolduer]

Now for the much larger problem...................losing the attitude that "women are property"............That's a far, far larger problem than honor killings....

Agreed. Start with mandatory citizenship classes for all immigrants and some Canadians.

 

[ModlrMike]

Agreed. Start with mandatory citizenship classes for all immigrants and some Canadians.

Add mandatory language classes to that.

 

[GeorgeD]

Would any of that change their ideas,culture and beliefs?

 

[OldSolduer]

Would any of that change their ideas,culture and beliefs?

Maybe not right away, but over a generation...

 

[jollyjacktar]

I'm very happy to see the jury was not suckered into the BS realm the defence was trying to weave.  It's a good verdict and hopefully will send a message to those others out there who have an evil twisted idea of what honour is all about.  I do wonder how the general population inside will warm to them all.  And kudos to all the good work done by the police, crowns and everyone else who made this case successful. 

 

[OldSolduer]

.  I do wonder how the general population inside will warm to them all. 

They are pariahs already I am guessing. I imagine they are already in protective custody, and most likely (If I were the Superintendent of the jail they were in) on a suicide watch.
My  :2c: minus GST.

 

[Pieman]

I don't particularily like talking about court trials/decision etc because no matter what on a forum:

No one knows the true facts and evidence of the trial

People come up with their own assumptions and theories

People disagree or agree with outcomes of trials without interior knowledge of the trial

I totally agree there. I am glad that there is a jury there to make these decisions. I have been watching the case on news, and could not decide from what I read one way or the other. My gut kept telling me that something did not add up on either side of the case. I just have to trust that the jury came to the right decision.

 

[ttlbmg]

I found it very interesting last night, as I was watching the news, they had an interview with a member of the Muslim Association of Canada, and her response to the idea of honor killings and Islam. She thought that immigrants coming into Canada should learn Canadian culture and should adapt to Canadian ways. Her contention was that those who did not want to conform or accept the "Canadian" Muslim, then they should "go back to the country they came from." These ideas are not that of Islamic faith, but of barbarians and old world thinkers. I thought it was interesting to hear such a strong opinion from someone of the Muslim culture explaining this. I guess there comes a time when you get sick of these people representing you in the world. One can only hope that something positive can come out of this tragedy, rather than the rest of the country and world simply chalking it up to "the Muslims" again.

 

[Edward Campbell]

There is nothing inherently Muslim about honour killings; they are a problem in several different religions - including some parts of Christendom. They, honour killings, are a purely cultural phenomenon and, as such, they are problematical throughout Northern Africa, the Middle East, and West and South Asia,including India. Where there are large migrant populations from those regions they are also problems for the new host nations, like Australia, Britain and Canada.

 

[The Bread Guy]

They are pariahs already I am guessing. I imagine they are already in protective custody, and most likely (If I were the Superintendent of the jail they were in) on a suicide watch.
My  :2c: minus GST.

One hopes, but I was listening to a CBC Radio call-in on this today, and one gentleman who helps folks dealing with such situations says he's taken calls from men, senior professionals in this country, who mainly feel pressure from others within their community to "take care" of such honour issues.

 

[Strike]

I totally agree there. I am glad that there is a jury there to make these decisions. I have been watching the case on news, and could not decide from what I read one way or the other. My gut kept telling me that something did not add up on either side of the case. I just have to trust that the jury came to the right decision.

That probably comes from being so used to people being caught outright in the act or our exposure to Law & Order-type shows where the prosecution is able to find that 1 piece of evidence that will convict the accused without a doubt.

In this case it was a matter of a bunch of little things that, alone, caused the gut feeling but, together, added to the jury finding the accused guilty.

Needless to say, this will probably end up being a made-for-tv movie some time in the near future.

 

[Diamondwillow]

Thought this was an interesting *meaty* article.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/canada/Blatchford+heart+Shafia+trial+very+notion+what+girl/6069603/story.html

 

[a_majoor]

And I hope the term "Honour killing" is forever struck from the vocabulary; this is one of the sickest and most cowardly crimes imaginable.

Update:

http://forums.army.ca/forums/index.php?action=post;msg=1109767;topic=87856.50

Shafia lawyers expected to appeal murder conviction

CTVNews.ca Staff

Date: Mon. Jan. 30 2012 9:01 AM ET

The lawyers of a Montreal couple and their son who were convicted on Sunday of murdering four female relatives are expected to appeal the decision.

A jury found Mohammad Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed, 21, each guilty of four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Shafia's three teenaged daughters and his first wife.

A first-degree murder conviction carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

Sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Shafia's other wife Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, were found dead on June 30, 2009 in a car at the bottom of a canal in Kingston, Ont.

On Sunday, after 15 hours of deliberation following the 10-week trial, jurors handed down their verdict.

"It was a very dramatic sceene inside the courtroom of course when the jurors stood up and said that all three accused were to be found guilty on all counts," said CTV's Montreal Bureau Chief Genevieve Beauchemin.

"Both the accused at the time -- now the convicted killers -- and jurors were very emotional."

In a rare move the defence lawyer asked each juror to stand up and say whether they agreed with the verdict. One female member of the jury said she did, but then sat down and immediately burst into tears, Beauchemin told CTV's Canada AM on Monday.

When asked by the judge whether they had anything to say, Mohammad, Tooba and Hamed all maintained their innocence -- a stance they took throughout the trial.

"We are not criminal, we are not murderers, we didn't commit the murder and this is unjust," Mohammad Shafia told the court through a translator.

"Your honourable justice, this is not just," Yahya said, also through an interpreter. "I am not a murderer, and I am a mother -- a mother!"

Hamed addressed the judge in English, saying: "Sir, I did not drown my sisters anywhere."

Hamed also leaned forward when the verdict was read, apparently upset, while his parents rubbed his back in an attempt to console their son.

After the verdicts were read out the crowd made its way outside to line up near a fence to catch one last glimpse of the convicted killers before they were taken away.

As Mohammad Shafia was led out, he loudly said: "Wrong," apparently in reference to the verdict.

Outside the courtroom, prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis said it was a good day for Canadian justice but also a sad day because it involved the death of four women.

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

Some onlookers in a crowd on the court steps cheered when Laarhuis spoke while others heckled the prosecutor.

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

Also speaking outside the court, Shafia's lawyer Peter Kemp said he believes the jury was swayed by wiretap conversations in which his client called his dead daughters whores.

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

Hamed's lawyer, Patrick McCann, said his client will appeal. He believes Hamed's parents will do the same.

From the start of the trial in October, prosecutors argued these were "honour killings" -- the Afghan-Canadian family's answer to the young sisters' perceived shameful behaviour.

"It is difficult to conceive of a more despicable, more heinous, more honourless crime," Justice Robert Maranger said in court after the verdict was delivered Sunday.

"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."

Prosecutors had argued that the young Shafia sisters had shamed the conservative Afghan family -- and especially its patriarch -- by wearing revealing clothing, refusing to don hijabs and having boyfriends.

The jury heard that Zainab had previously run away from home and was briefly married to a Pakistani man Shafia did not approve of. The marriage was annulled within 24 hours.

Sahar also had a forbidden boyfriend, while the youngest of the three, Geeti, told her teachers she wanted to be placed in foster care. Mohammad Shafia's first, infertile, wife had protected the girls, especially Sahar, whom she had been raising as her own, court heard.

Jurors reached the guilty verdict after a 10-week trial, 58 witnesses and 15 hours of deliberations.

Court also heard damning wiretapped conversations between the accused in which, at one point, Shafia said of his dead daughters: "God's curse on them … May the devil shit on their graves."

Teachers, child protection workers and police officers testified about reports from the girls that they were afraid of their father and brother and wanted to run away from home.

The Crown painted a picture of a highly dysfunctional polygamous family, with Shafia and Hamed exerting control over female members of the household and the two wives fighting for Shafia's affections.

Yahya and Shafia refuted the Crown's theory and evidence, saying they loved their children and would have never killed them. In interviews with police and on the stand, the couple maintained the deaths were a tragic accident.

Beauchemin said there will be no victim impact statement following the trial. She said that may be because relatives stood by the accused throughout the trial.

"Perhaps that's part of the issue here or perhaps simply all those people felt everything that needed to be said...had been said during the trial," Beauchemin said.

Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20120130/shafia-verdict-follow-120130/#ixzz1l0IXB0Y5

Not one of their relatives stood for these girls and their mother? How sad indeed...

 

[The Bread Guy]

Niiiiiiiiiiiiice....

In the weeks before he helped kill his sisters and his father's first wife, someone had used Hamed Shafia's laptop for an online search.

That person wanted to know: "can a prisoner have control over their real estate?"

Now Hamed, his father Mohammad Shafia and his mother Tooba Yahya are prisoners themselves and they will discover the answer is yes.

The trio were convicted Sunday of first-degree murder for the deaths of sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, and Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, their father's first wife in a polygamous marriage.

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.

Mohammad Shafia was a prosperous businessman, a jury heard over the course of the trial.

He began at a young age in Afghanistan, starting an electronics business with money from his grandfather.

After arriving in Montreal in 2007, he bought a strip mall worth over $1 million, with a cash down payment. That same year, he sold a house in Kabul for close to $1 million. He had an import business, bought and sold cars through an online auction and also frequently travelled for business to Dubai.

When she died, his first wife Rona had been travelling with jewelry appraised at roughly $23,000.

Shafia was also building a mansion in a Montreal suburb to house his sprawling family.

His prison quarters will be far tighter, but perhaps not his personal bank account.

Any assets Shafia had before his conviction remain in his hands, criminal lawyers say ....

The Canadian Press, 30 Jan 12

 

[Jarnhamar]

What exactly happens during an appeal?

Does it end up costing the tax payers even more money?

10 weeks for a trial seems long to me.

If this happens in Canada imagine what women go through in Afghanistan.

 

[GAP]

What exactly happens during an appeal?

Does it end up costing the tax payers even more money?

10 weeks for a trial seems long to me.

If this happens in Canada imagine what women go through in Afghanistan.

this   

30 January 2012
Afghan woman is killed 'for giving birth to a girl'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16787534

 

[jollyjacktar]

this   

30 January 2012
Afghan woman is killed 'for giving birth to a girl'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16787534

Yeah, disgusting eh?  I read the same story at the Daily Mail site.  My mind boggles at the barbarity of some people.  If you can even call them people, acting this way...

 

[Jarnhamar]

What a disgusting cultural mindset.