Shafia honour killings trio seek new trial
Argue ‘ victims of cultural stereotyping’
KINGSTON, ONT. • A Montreal father, mother and son convicted nearly four years ago of murdering four other family members in an honour killing argue, in an appeal to Ontario’s top court, that they were victims of “cultural stereotyping” and “overwhelmingly prejudicial evidence” that should not have been admitted at their murder trial.
In a 110-page document filed with the Ontario Court of Appeal, Mohammad Shafia, 62, his wife Tooba, 45, and their son Hamed, 24, claim they’re entitled to a new trial. Their hearing is scheduled for Dec. 14.
The trio, who were tried together, complains that the trial judge, Justice Robert Maranger, made numerous errors of “misdirection and non-direction” that may have permitted jurors to make improper conclusions.
The three were each convicted in January 2012 of four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Shafia sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, Geeti, 13; and Rona Amir, 52.
Amir was Shafia’s first wife in the polygamous 10-member Afghan family that came to Canada in 2007 and settled in Montreal.
The three were sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
The case attracted international attention and was among events that sparked the Conservative government’s crackdown on what it calls “barbaric cultural practices.”
The victims were found dead in June 2009 inside a Nissan Sentra that belonged to Mohammad Shafia, at the bottom of a three-metre deep canal in Kingston, Ont.
The sensational threemonth trial heard that Shafia was enraged because he felt his teenage daughters had violated cultural rules requiring sexual modesty, they were disobedient and the two eldest girls had boyfriends. Amir wanted a divorce and supported the girls in their pursuit of western lifestyles. Rona wrote in a diary entered as evidence that she and Tooba clashed frequently; she was abused, humiliated and isolated.
Jurors were told that Shafia concocted a plan to murder the four in a bid to restore his tarnished honour, in an ancient cultural practice that places family honour above human life. This honour is rooted in the modesty and subservience of the female family members to the patriarch.
Several witnesses testified during the trial that Shafia spoke openly, before the four died, of wanting to kill Zainab. Prosecutors told jurors that Shafia enlisted the help of his eldest son and second wife in the elaborate but flawed plot to conceal the killings as a car crash.
Fearing jurors wouldn’t be able to fathom that a father would conspire to murder nearly half his family; prosecutors recruited an expert on honour killing. Despite defence objections, University of Toronto professor Shahrzad Mojab was permitted to testify about the origins of the practice, but not about whether the deaths of the four Shafia family members were honour killings.
The lengthy document filed with the appeal court includes a pointed, 13-page attack on Mojab’s testimony.
“Dr. Mojab’s evidence was overwhelmingly prejudicial and should not have been admitted,” states the document. “Her evidence invited the jury to improperly find that the Appellants had a disposition to commit family homicide as a result of their cultural background and to reject their claim that they held a different set of cultural beliefs.”
The manner in which Mojab’s evidence was presented “created enormous prejudice” and invited jurors to decide contested factual issues by relying on “cultural stereotyping,” according to the document.
It was prepared jointly by three lawyers representing the convicted family members and argues that while some of Mojab’s evidence may have been admissible, the judge failed to “limit its scope and its potential for prejudice.”
Toronto lawyers Michael Dineen, representing Shafia, Frank Addario for Tooba and Scott Hutchison for Hamed, declined to comment.
Shafia and Tooba both testified at the trial and rejected claims that they were abusive, conspired to kill their family members or that they subscribed to the notion of family honour above all.
Tooba repudiated parts of a statement she made to a police interrogator after her arrest, including the admission that she was at the canal when the car went into the water on June 30, 2009.
During Tooba’s trial testimony, she said parts of her police statement “were all lies” designed to convince the interrogator to leave her alone and to protect her son Hamed from torture she feared he’d face from police. Hamed did not testify. Though never proved, prosecutors theorized the killers incapacitated the victims, perhaps by drowning them elsewhere, placed the bodies inside the Sentra and pushed it over a ledge into the canal with the other vehicle. Forensic tests concluded all of the victims drowned but the time and place they died could not be established.
(THE) EVIDENCE WAS OVERWHELMINGLY PREJUDICIAL AND SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ADMITTED. — DOCUMENT FILED IN COURT SEEKING A NEW TRIAL IN HONOUR KILLINGS