In Kingston, Ontario, a judge has found an Afghan family guilty of drowning the father’s three teenage daughters and one of his wives for behavior that defied his strict rules — not for crime, not for drugs, not for violence — but primarily because they dated men without his permission.
From the Daily Mail:
An Afghan father, his wife and their son have been jailed for life after a jury found them guilty of killing three teenage sisters and a co-wife in what the judge described as a ‘despicable’ and ‘heinous’ crime.
The jury had taken 15 hours to find Mohammad Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba Yahya, 42; and their son Hamed, 21, each guilty of four counts of first-degree murder.
The four bodies were found in June 2009 in a car submerged in a canal in Kingston, Ontario, where the family had stopped for the night on their way home from Niagara Falls.
Prosecutors said the daughters were killed because they dishonored the family by defying rules on dress, dating, socialising and going online.
After the verdict was read, the three defendants again declared their innocence in the killings of sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar 17, and Geeti, 13, as well as Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, Shafia’s childless first wife in a polygamous marriage.
After the jury returned the verdicts, Mohammad Shafia, speaking through a translator, said: ‘We are not criminal, we are not murderer, we didn’t commit the murder and this is unjust.’
His weeping wife, Tooba, also declared the verdict unjust. She said: ‘I am not a murderer, and I am a mother, a mother.’
Their son, Hamed, speaking in English said: ‘I did not drown my sisters anywhere.’
But Judge Robert Maranger was unmoved, saying the evidence clearly supported their conviction for ‘the planned and deliberate murder of four members of your family’.
‘It is difficult to conceive of a more despicable, more heinous crime … the apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your completely twisted concept of honor … that has absolutely no place in any civilized society.’
Read the rest of the story here.
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