Why did shafia

You immediately asked what was going on. He answered that he was going to kill them. You tried to grab him from behind, pleading him not to do this. He then hit the Nissan with the Lexus a second time, and you saw the Nissan plunge into the water. You mentioned that after the fact, your son sat with you and calmly held your hand.

Yahya will be eligible for full parole in Her permanent residency status was removed last year and she is likely to be deported when she is released.

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By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Habs history, reader stories and more. Additionally, they learned that Mohammad Shafia was embroiled in a polygamous marriage and Rona Mohammad Amir was his first wife. When Rona was unable to get pregnant, Mohammad married Tooba Shafia. The most significant breakthrough in the case came when Hamed reported that their family vehicle was involved in an accident in a parking lot in Montreal on the same day the bodies were discovered.

Authorities suspected that the family SUV could have been used to push the smaller car in and wanted to investigate the reported damages. Once both vehicles were examined thoroughly, the police concluded that the SUV was used to ram the Nissan Sentra into the water. Once the case went to court, it gained enormous media attention as the murders were branded as honor killings.

Mohammad Shafia insisted on his innocence and pleaded not guilty to the charges. However, the jury did not agree and convicted him of first-degree murder. In , Mohammad was given a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years based on his conviction. They were not a family of three for very long.

Within weeks of the wedding, Tooba was pregnant with Zainab, the baby her new husband so badly wanted. But in September , he held his tiny daughter for the first time, cradling her in the same hands that, years later, would take her life.

At home, Rona played the obligatory role of surrogate mother, helping Tooba care for the baby and tend to chores while still praying for a child of her own. Yet even then, in the early months of their polygamy, Rona realized what was happening. The Shafias, fleeing by car, arrived at the Pakistani border as a family of six: Rona, Zainab and Sahar, destined to die at the Kingston Mills locks.

And Shafia, Tooba and Hamed, destined to stand trial for their murders. At the time, Tooba was pregnant with her fourth child, another daughter. But during the trial, jurors heard plenty of evidence about her eventual role in the Shafia household: a standout student who spied on her sisters and reported back to mom and dad.

He, too, would be cast as a family snitch, tattling on the girls and defending his parents from the witness stand. Geeti-the youngest daughter fished from the canal-was baby number six. After she was born, the family started packing yet again, this time for the United Arab Emirates. Shafia launched a new company M. He would later expand his operation to include used cars imported from the United States-purchased, ironically enough, from online auctions that specialize in damaged vehicles.

Although the UAE is an Islamic country, the children attended a private American school, where they wore uniforms, learned to speak English, and met kids from around the world. For Rona, though, the move left her more marginalized than ever. Although the Shafias stayed in Dubai for more than a decade, they spent much of that time searching for a new home, a place that could offer them citizenship, not just residency. They even spent a brief period in Australia, only to return to Dubai within a year.

Shafia had no trouble covering the cost. His only challenge was figuring out how to hide the truth about his two wives, a violation of Canadian law that would have certainly derailed his application. In the end, he listed only one spouse on his paperwork: Tooba. So in June , while the rest of the family boarded a plane to Canada, Rona was sent to live with relatives in Europe while Shafia concocted a plan to bring her here. It was the first time she had ever been separated from the others, and to her own surprise, she missed them terribly.

While waiting for the home to be finished, the Shafias spent two years squished into a rental home in the borough of Saint-Leonard, split between four bedrooms and two bathrooms. It looked hardly the home of a globe-trotting businessman. What happened between those walls, from June to June , was the subject of so much conflicting testimony that not even the dead know the full truth.

Although Shafia had moved his daughters to the freest of countries and given them endless money to eat fast food and buy expensive clothes he expected them to uphold his twisted sense of honour. By the fall of , six months after everyone else arrived, Rona was finally on her way to Canada.

She was greeted by the same old Tooba. Most nights, though, it was just Tooba and the child, as Shafia spent much more time in Dubai than he ever did in Montreal. During those two years before his arrest, he was in Canada for a total of only six months. Zainab, though older, knew full well not to cross her kid brother. They were attending the same Montreal school in February when a Pakistani classmate sent her a Valentine.

She responded with a covert email. Barely a month after that email, while both her parents were visiting Dubai, Zainab invited her new boyfriend to the house, unaware that Hamed was on his way there, too.

He found Wahid hiding in the garage, shook his hand, and asked him to leave. Zainab years old-never returned to that school, and for the next 10 months she was essentially banished to her room. Sahar was trapped in her own silent hell. She was 16, still adjusting to life in Canada, when her mother accused her of kissing a boy. Depressed and suicidal, Sahar peeled open one of those white silica gel packets from a shoebox and mixed it with water. Let her kill herself. Hamed flinging a pair of scissors at her hand.

The suicide attempt. Pressure to wear the hijab. Sahar said her mother had barely talked to her in months, and had ordered the other kids to ignore her, too.

Evelyn Benayoun, a Batshaw intake worker, was on the other end of the phone. But when Jeanne Rowe arrived at Antoine-de-St. Though still sobbing, she denied everything. Following protocol, Rowe did phone the house. Tooba arrived at school first, Zainab in tow. She refuted everything, including the suicide story. Shafia walked in a few minutes later, Hamed at his side. Two days later, when Rowe returned to the school for a follow-up visit, Sahar was wearing a hijab.

The child was not at risk at the time, she wanted to go home, so we closed the case. At home, though, nothing changed. Rona spent her days wandering through parks and using pay phones to confide in relatives overseas. I want to be in an accident. They never met face to face, but in the year leading up to her death, Rona would phone Fahima Vorgetts up to three times a week. Not once did she call from the house. And hovering over everything was her unsettled immigration status.

Shafia, it turns out, was also concerned about her immigration file-for a very different reason: if the government discovered the truth about their relationship, the entire family could face deportation. A few months after her 19th birthday, Zainab was finally allowed to return to school though not the same one where she met Wahid. She took morning classes by herself, and a French night course with Hamed and her mother.

During a rare moment alone, she emailed her old boyfriend. By the beginning of , they were sneaking visits once again. Sometimes at the library. And sometimes with Sahar-and her new boyfriend. It was Zainab, defiant to the end, who first introduced the couple. Ricardo Sanchez, a recent immigrant from Honduras, was enrolled in her French class. He was 21 at the time, four years older than her younger sister, but Zainab wanted him to meet Sahar so badly that she brought him to her school.

They could barely communicate he spoke Spanish, she spoke English and for the first little while, Ricardo thought her name was Natasha. And she was agreeing. Sanchez was living with an aunt, Erma Medina, when he first came to Canada. She told me that several times. Geeti knew about Sanchez. She knew everything about Sahar. They were as close as two sisters could be. But Geeti, now 13, was her own breed of rebel.

She never lived a day in Afghanistan, and grew up among the privileged at a Dubai private school. During parent-teacher interviews, Shafia complained about his daughter pulling the same antics in grade school, and asked that her behaviour be logged in a daily agenda book.

When they arrived home late, Shafia was so enraged that he and Hamed lashed out at all three of them, screaming and slapping. Geeti, stubborn like a rock, did not. For Zainab, who watched it all unfold, the abuse had become unbearable. Days later, she made a gutsy decision that rocked her family to the core. She escaped. Hamed was frantic enough to phone , telling the dispatcher that his older sister-a few months shy of her 20th birthday-had run away.

A few minutes after hanging up, Hamed called again. For Shafia, it was a monstrous betrayal. His adult daughter was out in the world, unsupervised, unrestrained. She could be having sex. Her courage, her thirst for freedom, is what got her killed just 10 weeks later. But what began as a conspiracy to punish her, and only her, quickly spiralled into mass murder. One bad apple became two bad apples. Two became three. And three became four.

The day Zainab left, news of her disappearance trickled back to her teenaged siblings at school. Ann-Marie Choquette was one of the Montreal constables who responded to the scene. She and her partner found the kids standing on a street corner, still too afraid to go home, and escorted them the rest of the way. Outside the house, Choquette interviewed each of them, alone. Geeti told the officers about the mall incident the week before, how dad pulled her hair and Hamed punched her in the face.

Like Geeti, Sahar said Hamed had slapped her, and that she watched as Shafia beat Zainab because of her boyfriend. The kids were still outside when Shafia pulled into the driveway. The social worker spoke to Shafia, Tooba, and Hamed, but decided it was safe to leave the kids and continue his investigation after the weekend.

Choquette thought there was ample evidence to lay a criminal charge, but following standard protocol, she left that decision to DPJ. Choquette did see Shafia and Hamed again-that Sunday, at the police station. On April 20, the Monday after Zainab left, the case file landed on the desk of Laurie-Ann Lefebvre, a Montreal detective who worked the child abuse beat.

Sahar was wearing makeup and jewellery, and no hijab. The warning signs, though, were everywhere. Sahar did, but was often in tears, shielding the truth about her sister by telling teachers and classmates she was in a coma.

What can we do? When their brother left, though, Sahar and Geeti told a much different story. Zainab was still in the shelter when Rona overheard a conversation so terrifying that she shared it with her sister in France.

This is not Afghanistan. This is not Dubai. This is Canada. Nothing will happen. Eventually, Zainab did make contact with her mother. In fact, it was Tooba who convinced her daughter to come back home, promising that if she really did love Wahid, they could get married. Zainab walked through the front door on May 1, , right after her dad flew to Dubai for another business trip. As the wedding day approached, Tooba kept pressuring her daughter to back out.

She even enlisted the help of one her brothers, Fazil Javid, who ran a pizza parlour in Sweden. But after numerous telephone conversations, Javid said he realized exactly what Zainab was doing.

At the very least, Javid wanted to travel to Montreal to meet Wahid and his family, to make sure the Pakistani could provide a proper life for his niece. Out of respect, he phoned his brother-in-law in Dubai to make sure he accepted such a visit. Javid said he swore at Shafia and hung up the phone, then scrambled to warn both Tooba and another brother living in Montreal. With Shafia out of the country, Sahar was spending even more time with Sanchez, her cellphone photos a chronicle of their young, forbidden love.

Cuddling on a living room chair, her arm wrapped around his. Smiling in a pair of sunglasses, his hand resting on her stomach. In one shot, Sanchez is not wearing a shirt.

In another, the couple is standing on a porch, Sahar wearing a short jean skirt and a yellow top. They were talking about running away to Honduras. At school one day, she asked Boualia, their math teacher, if she would be allowed to take her little sister if she ever moved out. Boualia advised against it, telling Sahar that a year-old girl belongs with her parents. When Geeti found out, she was inconsolable, to the point that Boualia and a vice-principal spent an entire lunch hour trying to calm her down.

When she died seven weeks later, police found a page in one of her notebooks, full of affectionate doodles to her big sister. Back at home, Zainab could not be dissuaded. She was going to marry Wahid, regardless of what her family thought. So with Shafia still in Dubai-murder already on his mind-Tooba phoned an uncle, Latif Hyderi, and asked him to organize the nikah, the Islamic marriage ritual.

The Shafias, hardly religious to begin with, had not stepped foot in a mosque since arriving in Canada. Hyderi made all the arrangements, finding a mullah and booking a restaurant for the reception. The ceremony took place on May 18, six weeks before the bodies were found. The next morning, before the reception, Zainab had her hair styled and her hands painted with henna. Hyderi drove her to the restaurant, and on the way he tried to counsel Zainab, one last time, to reconsider the marriage.

But her answer was clear. That freedom, it turned out, was short-lived. People were throwing water on her. Like so much about the Shafias, the events of that day depend on who is doing the remembering. But one thing is certain: Zainab asked for a divorce, and Wahid agreed.

The mullah declared them divorced right at the restaurant. They were husband and wife for barely 24 hours. She would marry one of his sons, a good Afghan boy.

When Hyderi phoned Dubai, Shafia seemed to approve of the idea. A few days later, inside a different restaurant, Sahar was hugging Sanchez.

By the time she noticed her younger brother walk in, it was too late. On May 30, exactly one month before she died, she fainted in class and had to be rushed to a hospital.

But by then, it appears, her secret was already exposed. On June 1, Hamed hopped on a plane to join his father in Dubai, and when investigators later searched the house, they found that boarding pass stuffed inside his suitcase-along with numerous photos of Sahar and Sanchez, taken straight from her cellphone and developed into prints.

As soon as her brother left, Zainab sent another email to her now ex-husband. That Monday, June 5, Sahar told a teacher how worried she was. The worker on the other end suggested that she find a shelter.

At school that Monday, Sahar met with another social worker. Like so many times before, she told Stephanie Benjamin about her tyrant of an older brother and her desire to find a job. She also opened up about her ultimate dream: to become a gynecologist and help women in her native Afghanistan.

The next night, June 9, Zainab sent another email to Wahid. She had not seen her dad since fleeing the house, and he was due home in just a few days. Geeti was hardly going to school at all.

She was failing all four classes, and the one day she did bother to show up, a vice- principal sent her home for wearing a low-cut sweater. While Shafia was gone, Geeti was also caught shoplifting at Wal-Mart; she tried to steal a pink camisole and some leggings. Geeti was growing more brash, more uncontrollable, by the day. And as Hamed and her parents no doubt realized, she would not keep quiet if Zainab and Sahar turned up dead.

She would be the first one to call the cops and blow the whistle. It seemed to me like she wanted to do something. And then I heard that she was dead. Shafia and Hamed landed in Montreal on June 13, By all accounts-including his own-Shafia kissed Zainab on the head and forgave her for everything. But nothing, of course, was truly forgiven.

He just wanted his daughter to feel comfortable, to assume that things were fine. The day after that, his mobile phone travelled all the way to-and all the way back-from rural Grand-Remous, Que.

His Internet research had escalated into full-blown reconnaissance. A few hours after Sahar read that message, her father purchased a used car: a Nissan Sentra, black with grey interior. A car pictured found at the bottom of the Rideau canal in eastern Ontario seemed to trace a very deliberate path, a murder trial heard on Oct.

As far as the children knew, they were going on a road trip to Vancouver. Or Niagara Falls. Or somewhere else. The destination was never clear. On the way out of town, while stopped at a fruit store, the family caravan bumped into Latif Hyderi. You have to bring her back safe and sound. The trip to Sweden. The picnic by the water.