A Question of 'Honor': Family Convicted of Killing Daughters Tries for New Trial in Canada

It's been almost seven years since the bodies of three sisters and a relative were found in a car, submerged underwater at the bottom of a canal in Kingston, Ontario, and nearly four years since their parents and brother were convicted of their murders.

The infamous case of the Shafias, a devoutly Muslim Afghan family living in Montreal, garnered international attention as a narrative emerged of an intensely religious father who was ashamed of daughters who dressed like Westerners and kept secret boyfriends.

Cast by prosecutors as an "honor killing" before a jury rendered them guilty, Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Yahya and their son Hamed are now back, fighting for new trials, and claiming that that very characterization was used unfairly against them.

Hamed is also claiming that he has since discovered that he was actually 17, not 18, at the time of the murders — a fact that would have made a big difference in Canada's judicial system, which treats minors much more leniently.

Hamed and his parents are each serving life sentences for killing his sisters — Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13 — and Mohammad's first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, whose bodies were found in a Nissan Sentra at the bottom of the Rideau Canal in 2009.

The case was first deemed to be a bizarre accident, with Mohammad and Tooba giving a tearful interview to reporters after the bodies were discovered, but investigators would come to believe their story was full of lies.

"The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your twisted notion of honor, a notion of honor that is founded upon the domination and control of women, a sick notion of honor that has absolutely no place in any civilized society," Judge Robert Maranger said at their sentencing, even as the Shafias claimed their innocence.

Represented by their lawyers in a Toronto courtroom this week, the three convicts argued that allowing testimony from a university expert about "honor killings" was but one error in the high profile trial of 2012 that should entitle them to a new hearing.

It's the evidence of University of Toronto professor Dr. Shahrzad Mojab that is under the microscope. Her "anecdotal" testimony about honour killings could have led the jury to believe that the Shafias "had a disposition to commit family homicide as a result of their cultural background and to reject their claim that the held a different set of cultural beliefs," the defense argued on Thursday.

The jury could've also compared the Shafia murders to Mojab's "anecdotal accounts of entirely unrelated murders in order to fit the case within the template of culturally inspired homicides."

The prejudice was made even worse by racially charged language and Mojab reading out denunciations of honor killings from international organizations, Addario argued.

"That type of evidence is flat out prohibited," lawyer Frank Addario told the court. "She should not have been permitted to tell (the jury) how honor killings are typically carried out or read out denunciations on honor killings."

While testimony on shame and sexual behaviour in Afghan society was cultural evidence relevant to motive, Addario said Mojab went far beyond that purpose.

"While it may be logically relevant, it's not legally valid," he said.

Hamed's lawyer, on the other hand, focused on his age, presenting previously unseen documents from Afghanistan that he said indicated his client's actual date of birth was a year later, in 1991.

Hutchinson believes the outcome would've been drastically different had the court known Hamed's age — something he apparently didn't know either.

Hutchinson explained that birthdates have little significance in Afghan culture, and that the family left behind identity documents when they fled the country, then in the midst of a civil war.

"Age, so far as it relates to young people, is not a technicality," Hutchinson told the court. "We don't treat young people the same way we treat adults."

In the chaos of escaping Afghanistan, his factum said, foreign languages, scripts and calendar resulted in Shafia's birthday being recorded incorrectly, citing the differences between the Afghan Solar Hijiri Calendar and the Gregorian calendar.

But Crown lawyer Jocelyn Speyer viewed this with skepticism, telling the court the conversion wasn't "rocket science" and "perhaps not as confusing as was conveyed to the court."

Among other things, she noted a lack of security features on an identity document known as a "tazkira", the fact the 1995 document was validated with an "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan" stamp, even though the country wasn't called that until 2004, and that it was signed with a gel pen, which didn't exist at the time.

The document, Shafia's camp says, was discovered by accident after the trial was over when an employee of Mohammad's in Afghanistan was doing paperwork to transfer some of his boss's property to Hamed.

The question of Hamed's age has far reaching implications.

If, as a youth, Hamed had been tried separately from his parents, Mohammad and Yahya may have been able to call on him as a witness to corroborate their alibi, the court heard.

The defense also argued that the judge erred in his instructions to the jury in several ways, including failing to tell them that they shouldn't use hearsay statements from four women — for example Rona and Sahar's saying they were afraid Shafia and Hamed might turn violent towards them in the future — to evaluate the state of mind of the accused, and that they couldn't use failed or fabricated exculpatory statements to support a conclusion of guilt.

The Crown prosecutor will continue its submissions today.

Follow Tamara Khandaker on Twitter: @anima_tk