3 months set for canal mass murder trial

The trial of three Montrealers accused of killing four family members is expected to start in April 2011 and likely will run for three months. The details were discussed in a Kingston, Ontario, courtroom Wednesday, at a hearing where the accused trio are trying to get a communication ban lifted that bars them from talking to three children in Montreal and each other (the hearing didn't finish and will continue in May). Ottawa judge Mr. Justice Robert Maranger will preside over the Kingston trial of the mother, father and son from Afghanistan who are accused of a diabolical conspiracy to murder three teenage sisters in the family and a 50-year-old woman who was the accused father's first wife. Some relatives have alleged it was an honour killing, orchestrated by the father. The victims were found in a submerged car in a Kingston canal on June 30 last year. Exclusive photos of the accused leaving the Kingston courthouse yesterday appear in a slideshow above. After the jump, my complete story from today's Whig-Standard.

A complex and lurid murder trial likely will begin in Kingston in 13 months and could last more than three months.
The date for the Kingston Mills case was tentatively set yesterday by the judge who will preside over the case after discussions with five lawyers.
At the conclusion of a second day of a hearing related to the case, Mr. Justice Robert Maranger asked the lawyers about time needed and their availability.
“2010 isn’t going to work for me [but in] 2011 the court is available as soon as counsel are available to get the trial started,” he said, speaking to the lawyers in the main courtroom at the county courthouse.
The lawyers agreed that roughly four weeks would be needed to hear pre-trial motions.
“I think that is being very generous,” said Crown prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis.
Maranger said he would block off the month of October for those hearings, beginning Oct. 4. They could involve issues such as defence motions to prevent some material from being used at trial.
Maranger revealed the scope of the case when he said that it’s likely that 750 citizens will have to be summoned to the courthouse to allow the selection of 12 impartial jurors. Picking the jury could take four days.
“I think there’ll be a special jury selection for this,” he said. “It’s going to be a mega panel.”
Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, her husband, Mohammad Shafia, 56, and their son, Hamed, 19, are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
Jury selection could be held in the last week of March, he said, setting the stage for the trial to begin in April. It is projected to last 12 to 15 weeks.
The discussions about logistics capped a full day of testimony from a woman from Montreal who gave evidence alternately in English and sometimes in French, through a translator. As she has done often during hearings in the case, the accused mother began to sob during some of the testimony. She spent considerable time wiping at her face with tissues.
Her evidence is part of hearing called because the three accused are seeking to have a court order lifted that bars them from communicating with three family members in Montreal and with each other. The family members are children of the accused mother and father and siblings of the accused 19 year old. A publication ban prevents the reporting of evidence at the hearing.
The lawyers agreed to continue the hearing in May, at the same time that a pre-trial meeting is held, at which the lawyers and judges will meet to discuss means to streamline and expedite the process.
Maranger left no doubt that he’s handling the case. On Tuesday, he said he expected that he’d be assigned to the trial.
“I am seized with this,” he said yesterday. “I am going to be the trial judge.”
For the second day in a row, a court-appointed interpreter was not available to translate between English and Farsi, the Middle Eastern language spoken by the accused mother and father. Instead, an interpreter hired by the defence sat in the prisoner’s box between them and translated the English evidence.
Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahari, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside a submerged car discovered June 30 in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife.

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Ottawa judge likely to preside at canal murder trial

A bilingual Ottawa judge who is handling a high-profile immigration case involving a 30-year-old terrorist bombing will preside over a sensational Kingston murder trial that will unfold in at least three languages. During discussions yesterday as part of a hearing in the Kingston Mills canal murder case, Mr. Justice Robert Maranger revealed that he likely would be the trial judge.

“There’s a very good chance I am,” Maranger told the lawyers. “I think I am. There’s a really, really good chance I am.”
The issue came up as defence lawyer Peter Kemp was asking Maranger about scheduling pre-trial motion hearings and setting aside time for a trial. Kemp said he hopes that the pre-trial issues can be handled in May and June so that a trial could begin in October or November and conclude by Christmas.
Maranger was taken aback by the timeline Kemp was outlining.
“I didn’t realize this was on such a fast track,” he said.
Maranger noted that he is still busy with the Ottawa case in which France is seeking to extradite a former Carleton University professor, Hassan Diab. The French government claims Diab is responsible for a terrorist bombing in Paris in 1980 that killed four people and injured 40 others. A radical Palestinian group is blamed for the bombing.
Yesterday Maranger was on the bench in the cavernous second-floor courtroom of Kingston’s county courthouse (above) where three members of the Shafia family will be tried for murder.
Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, her husband, Mohammad Shafia, 56, and their son, Hamed, 19, are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
The accused mother and father walked, with leg shackles clinking, into the glass-encircled prisoner’s box in the centre of the courtroom. Hamed Shafia was seated at the side of the courtroom.
The hearing was convened because the three accused are seeking to have a court order lifted that bars them from communicating with three children in Montreal and with each other.
Like the preliminary hearing that concluded last week, a broad publication ban prohibits the reporting of most of what transpires during the hearing.
At the beginning of the proceeding, a lawyer representing an agency from Montreal sought to have a Whig-Standard reporter (me) turfed from the courtroom because of privacy concerns regarding evidence. The judge rejected her request and a man who works for the agency was called to testify.
Translation issues arose even before the hearing began.
“We have a little bit of a logistical problem,” Maranger said, at the beginning of the day. “We’re short one interpreter.”
It was explained that the court-appointed interpreter who was supposed to appear to translate between English and Farsi, the Middle Eastern language spoken by the accused mother and father, had a last-minute medical emergency; he was at the hospital with his wife who had gone into labour.
The lawyers agreed that a translator hired by the defence lawyers would substitute. He was seated in the prisoner box between the man and woman so that he could translate the evidence.
A woman also stood next to the witness, translating between English and French.
The witness, who appeared last week at the preliminary hearing, spent five hours on the witness stand.
Crown lawyer Laurie Lacelle told the judge, when he interrupted her questioning just after 4:30 p.m. to ask how much longer she would be, that she needed several more hours.
The lawyers realized that they might not be able to complete the hearing because the witness is not available to come back to Kingston today and defence lawyer Peter Kemp is not available on Thursday.
Another witness is expected to appear when the hearing resumes today.
Several times yesterday, the accused mother began to weep softly during the testimony. At one point, she held tissues over her nose and mouth for several minutes.
Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahari, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside a submerged car discovered June 30 in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife.

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Accused canal killers want communication ban lifted

from left, Mohammad Shafia, 56, wife Tooba, 40, son Hamed, 19, at the Kingston, Ontario courthouse on July 23, 2009 (photos by Ian MacAlpine and Michael Lea/The Whig-Standard)

My account from The Whig of the end of the preliminary hearing in the canal mass murder case in Kingston, Ontario:

Three Montrealers (above) accused of killing four family members are heading back to court Tuesday, just four days after the completion of a critical stage in their case.
A preliminary hearing for Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, her husband, Mohammad Shafia, 56, and their son, Hamed, 19, concluded yesterday in less than a third of the time it was expected to consume.

The trio will appear before a Superior Court judge in the coming week in a bid to overturn an order that bars them from communicating with three family members living in Montreal and from each other. The hearing is expected to last two days and, like the hearing that concluded yesterday, most of what is said will be subject to a broad order that prohibits publication or broadcast.
The family members in Montreal are three children of the Shafias, siblings of the accused 19 year old.
Though it was a formality, Justice Stephen Hunter, who presided over the preliminary, made an important declaration at its conclusion.
“The accused will be committed to stand trial on all counts,” Hunter said, ordering them held in custody. Early in the hearing, all of the accused had conceded that there was enough evidence to try them. The lawyers used the hearing, in part, to test the performance of some witnesses and some evidence.
The accused each face four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
Crown prosecutors called 22 witnesses over 15 days and filed thick stacks of documents and several DVDs. Roughly 50 exhibits were logged. The defence did not call any witnesses or submit any evidence, though it is entitled to do so.
Hunter also set May 3 as the next court date in the process, when discussions will be held about scheduling a trial and setting time for hearings on pre-trial motions. The defence lawyers are likely to file motions on a number of issues, including the admissibility of some evidence.
A trial is expected to be scheduled for early 2011.
The preliminary hearing spanned 15 days, though lawyers involved had originally estimated that it might take 10 weeks.
An elaborate audio system was installed in the courtroom to allow the simultaneous translation of the proceedings between English and Farsi, the Middle Eastern language spoken by the accused mother and father, who are originally from Afghanistan. The translation was fed to everyone in the courtroom through wireless headsets.
A sound-deadening booth that was dubbed the ‘garden shed’ by lawyers was erected near the prisoners box. Two court-certified translators, a man from Ottawa and another from Cornwall, drove to Kingston daily to sit inside the booth for hours, where they took turns interpreting the dialogue. An interpreter hired by the defence sat at a table behind the three defence lawyers.
Hunter thanked the court translators, lawyers and court staff for their hard work and noted that often the criminal justice system is criticized for moving at a “glacial pace.”
“This has not been the case here,” he said. “This is and has been an extremely complex and difficult matter, both substantively and logistically.
“It could have consumed more weeks and consumed many hundreds of thousands of dollars more.”
The proceeding wasn’t without hiccups.
Often Hunter was required to interrupt witnesses and occasionally lawyers, urging them to slow down to allow the translators to keep pace.
Several times, the translators interrupted the proceedings after realizing that they had misinterpreted words and phrases.
“It worked better than I expected it would,” said defence lawyer Peter Kemp, who represents the accused father. “The problem still is, when the witness gets asked a question, for example, in English by the Crown and the translator translates that question in Farsi to the witness, there is quite often a lengthy discussion that goes on between the translator and the witness which leaves me wondering whether there is more being said by the witness that we should be hearing.”
At the conclusion of the hearing, Hunter called all the lawyers into his chambers for a private debriefing about the logistics.
Kemp, an experienced litigator who is well known for his ability to pinpoint and pounce on inconsistencies in testimony, said it was difficult to make notes and to focus on the behaviour of witnesses.
“You’re trying to concentrate on the witness, who’s off to my right and the translators are speaking and I can hear them subtly off to my left,” he said. “You lose track of what’s being said.”
The translation booth butted up against the defence table in the relatively small courthouse on Wellington Street.
That physical problem likely will be eliminated if the trial is conducted in the large, second-floor courtroom in the county courthouse.
The translation obstacles were exaggerated by the occasional appearance of witnesses who spoke in French, including the last witness who appeared yesterday, a man from Montreal.
In that case, a French translator stood next to the witness, translating back and forth between English. Those translations were then translated into Farsi.
Kemp said it will be critical for the trial judge to instruct witnesses to take pauses and to speak slowly to allow translation to keep pace.
There were often more police officers at the preliminary hearing than spectactors.
Four highly trained tactical officers, equipped with handguns and Tasers, brought the accused to court each day in a three-vehicle convoy from the Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee and whisked them back there each night.
They remained in and around the courtroom throughout the hearing. At times, there were three additional officers in the courtroom, investigators assisting the Crown lawyers.
The accused sat in a row in the prisoner’s box, separated by police or court security officers. Many days, friends or family members of the accused sat in the spectator benches. Most refused to give their names or offer any comments outside the courtroom.
Several times during the hearing the accused mother broke into sobs. One day, she and her 19-year-old son were permitted to leave the courtroom because they did not want to be present for some evidence.
Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahari, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside a submerged car discovered June 30 in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife.
The accused were arrested July 22. They have been behind bars since that date.

» All coverage of the case

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Mass murder hearing speeding toward end

The first key court process leading to a trial for a mother, father and their 19-year-old son, who are charged with murdering four family members, is winding down. Here's my report from today's Whig-Standard on the progress of the hearing, which continues today but is expected to wrap up Friday.

A preliminary hearing for three Montrealers accused of killing four family members heard yesterday from its first witness who does not live in Canada.
A man from Sweden spent four and a half hours testifying in Farsi, the Middle Eastern language spoken by the accused.
A broad publication ban prohibits the reporting of the man’s testimony.
Prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis told the court that another European witness who had been scheduled to testify today will not appear. He said a “communication breakdown” scuttled plans for the woman from France to come to Canada. Instead, she is expected to testify as part of pre-trial motions that will be heard before a trial begins.
Because of the cancellation, it means only four witnesses remain to testify in a hearing that has heard from 20 witnesses over 13 days.
Laarhuis said the court won’t need to sit on Thursday, given the cancellation of the witness from France.
The hearing is expected to conclude Friday on schedule because the lawyers moved swiftly through the evidence. The hearing was originally projected to last 10 weeks.
The brevity is the result, in part, of the decision by all of the accused to concede early in the proceeding that there is enough evidence to send them to trial. It means that the prosecution does not have to prove to Justice Stephen Hunter that there is enough evidence to order a trial. Instead, the lawyers are using the hearing, largely, as a forum in which to test some of the evidence and the performance of witnesses when faced with the pressurized atmosphere of the courtroom.
There have been frequent bouts of crying and sobbing from witnesses and the accused, as evidence has been introduced and discussed.
The man from Sweden began to sob softly early in his testimony yesterday, forcing a brief stop in the proceedings as he composed himself. He took less than a minute to wipe at his eyes with a tissue.
Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, her husband Mohammad Shafia, 56, and their 19-year-old son Hamed, are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
The accused sit in the prisoner’s box each day, separated by two police officers or court security officers. They are prohibited by court order from communicating with each other.
They are accused of killing three daughters, Zainab, 19, Sahari, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50. The victims were found dead inside a car found June 30 last year submerged in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife.

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Trial for accused canal killing trio now a certainty

There's no longer any doubt that three Montrealers, a mother, father and their 19-year-old son, will stand trial in the murder of four family members, including three teenage sisters. This was confirmed today at a preliminary inquiry taking place in Kingston, Ontario.

Here's my story from the Whig-Standard:

A Montreal woman accused of killing three of her children and a 50-year-old woman has given up fighting the possibility of a trial.
“I understand that Yahya Tooba Mohammad is conceding committal today,” Crown prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis said this morning, at the resumption of a preliminary inquiry in the case of four females found dead inside a submerged car at Kingston Mills on June 30 last year.
“That’s correct, sir,” replied defence lawyer David Crowe, who represents the woman.
She was the last of three accused in the case to concede that there is enough evidence to send her to trial.
Her husband, Mohammad Shafia, 56, and her 19-year-old son Hamed, already had made the concessions.
It means there is no longer any doubt that the three family members will be tried, perhaps early in 2011. Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahari, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside the car discovered last year in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife.
Yahya’s concession came after a key decision yesterday by Justice Stephen Hunter.
He ruled that a significant piece of evidence that Crown lawyers wanted to submit is admissible.
The three accused are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
The evidence being presented at the preliminary inquiry cannot be reported because of far reaching publication bans.
The hearing, normally a legal exercise to determine if there is enough evidence to send the accused to trial, has taken on the tone of a fact finding exercise, now that all of the accused have acknowledged there’s enough evidence to try them.
The hearing is set to continue daily until the end of the month.

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Spectators denied canal killing evidence

Some strange goings-on in the last few days of the preliminary hearing being held in Kingston for three people accused of killing four family members who were found dead in a submerged car.

Here's my full story from today's Whig-Standard. Though the piece may seem deliberately cryptic, I'm handcuffed by the publication bans in place.

A preliminary inquiry is typically a secretive justice system process. Sweeping publication bans bar the reporting of most of what is said in the courtroom during such a hearing, but the courtroom remains open to spectators. Any citizen can show up and listen in.
The preliminary inquiry for three Montrealers accused of murdering four family members took on a super-secret atmosphere yesterday as some evidence in Farsi, a Middle Eastern language, was not translated into English for courtroom spectators, including reporters.
The mechanics of this strange situation cannot be explained because of the publication bans in place. They are designed to prevent evidence from being widely disseminated in the community, where it could theoretically poison citizens who might later serve on a jury. During the preliminary hearing, a judge determines if there is enough evidence to order the accused to stand trial.
For several hours Friday and on Thursday, spectators and some court staff did not know what was being said in the Kingston Mills case.
Two translators, sitting in a sound-dampening booth inside the courtroom, said nothing as evidence in Farsi was presented. The translators take turns interpreting most of the testimony into and out of Farsi. Their translations are fed to everyone in the courtroom through a network of wireless receiver boxes and headsets.
Until Thursday, they had translated all of the Farsi evidence into English.
Mohammad Shafia, 56, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, and their 19-year-old son Hamed are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder. Only Hamed Shafia speaks fluent English.
Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside a car discovered June 30 last year submerged in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife.
Yesterday the lawyers finished presenting evidence that is part of a hearing within the hearing. Justice Stephen Hunter is being asked to rule on whether a key piece of evidence is admissible. On Tuesday, when court resumes, the lawyers will make submissions to Hunter before he makes what could be a critical decision.
After the matter is decided, the preliminary hearing will continue in earnest.
So far, four witnesses have appeared, all police officers who have been involved in a case that crosses continents and cultural barriers.
The divide was evident yesterday.
The judge adjourned the proceedings at 12:30 p.m. for lunch, at a time when he normally would have continued hearing evidence. The two court-appointed translators had asked Hunter to give them an hour off at that time so that they could get to the Kingston mosque, located on Sydenham Road, for Friday prayers.
The men, practising Muslims, needed to participate in a group prayer session. They also pray to Allah five times a day, but are able on other days to pray in the court building on Wellington Street. When the two men took oaths to tell the truth at the beginning of the hearing, they placed their hands on the Quran, an Islamic holy text.
Though the courtroom was packed with spectators when the hearing began this week, by yesterday, only two or three spectators sat in the public benches.
Around noon, a young man in jeans raised some eyebrows when he strode quickly into the room and took a spot on the first-row spectator bench and began waving enthusiastically to Hamed Shafia, who grinned in acknowledgment from the prisoner box, where he is shackled and seated next to a court security officer.
When court concluded for the day, the spectator waved again. Hamed Shafia lifted his right hand slowly and waved twice.
The spectator described himself as a cousin of the accused, but he would not give his name.
The mother, father and son were arrested on July 22 last year, roughly three weeks after the four females were found dead. They remain behind bars at the Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee. They are brought in a van, under tight security, to the Kingston courthouse each day.

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The canal mass murder: Secrets I must keep

For a journalist, there's nothing more painful than hearing a good story – or a great story – that you can't write. Imagine how it feels when this happens every day, for days on end. I'm trapped now in this kind of journalistic purgatory, as I watch evidence, some of it dramatic and startling, unfolding at the preliminary hearing for three Montrealers – a mother, father and their 19-year-old son – who are accused of murdering four family members. A sweeping publication ban bars reporting of the evidence presented at the hearing. I've already heard and seen a wealth of new information, among the reams of material collected by investigators, but I can't tell you about any of it.

Of course, it could be worse. Canada's Criminal Code has broad provisions that enable a judge to conduct essentially a secret preliminary hearing, if he/she thinks that's a good idea, by ordering everyone out of the courtroom except the prosecutor, accused and his or her lawyer. A publication ban is imposed if the accused asks for it, and may be imposed if the prosecution asks for it. Journalists and a number of organizations are continuing to battle the courts and government over the use of publication bans, most notably in bail hearings. So far, the bans remain in widespread use, bolstered by the byzantine notion that citizens who could end up on juries will be poisoned by hearing the evidence reported before a trial. In an age where electronic communication knows no boundaries and spreads at nearly incomprehensible speed, it seems a sadly arcane and unenforcable notion. But it's the system we have, and we have to life with for now. Given this, here's my story that appears in today's Whig-Standard about Day 3 of the preliminary hearing, yesterday:


A battle over the admissibility of one significant piece of evidence continued yesterday (wed) at a hearing in the Kingston Mills murder case.
The evidence will likely be the subject of several more days of debate. The evidence and the submissions concerning it cannot be reported because of sweeping publication ban imposed by the judge.
Yesterday marked the third day of a preliminary hearing, a proceeding to determine if there is enough evidence to send the three accused to trial. The judge need only conclude that there is some evidence to order a trial.
Publication bans are typically sought by the accused at this stage to prevent potential jurors from hearing the evidence that will be presented at a trial.
Mohammad Shafia, 56, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, and their 19-year-old son Hamed are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
Police allege that the trio hatched a plan to kill four family members.
Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside a car discovered June 30 last year submerged in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife.
The two men have conceded that there is enough evidence to send them to trial, but they did not waive their right to participate in the preliminary hearing. Yahya has not made the same concession.
Lawyers for the two accused men were not in court yesterday.
A problem with translation that forced an abrupt end to the hearing Tuesday was resolved. The hearing is being simultaneously translated between English and Farsi by two translators closeted in a small booth erected inside Courtroom Number 1 at the provincial courthouse on Wellington Street.
Kingston Police have made a show of force at the hearing. At times, there have been seven officers in the courtroom, including four tactical officers armed with Tasers and handguns.
The accused sit in a row inside the prisoner’s box, separated by two court security officers. The accused are prohibited by court order from communicating with each other.
They wear headsets connected to wireless receivers that allow them to hear all of the English testimony translated into Farsi. Headsets and receivers also are available to members of the public who attend.
The 10-member Shafia family came to Canada from Afghanistan roughly three years ago.
The mother, father and son were arrested on July 22 last year. They have been held in custody since that time.

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Emotional outbursts at canal murder hearing

Some of the evidence revealed yesterday at the resumption of a hearing in the canal mass murder case proved emotionally jarring for one of the three accused killers. My full account of the hearing, published today in the Kingston-Whig-Standard, also appears after the jump.

By Rob Tripp
The Whig-Standard

A Montreal woman accused of murdering three of her daughters cried big, racking sobs yesterday as prosecutors began revealing some of the evidence against her.
Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, her husband Mohammad Shafia, 56, and the couple’s 19-year-old son Hamed are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead in a car that was discovered early on the morning of June 30, submerged in about three metres of water near a lock in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife.
The three accused have been behind bars since their arrest three weeks after the bodies were discovered.
Yesterday marked the beginning of a marathon, key phase of the court proceeding. A preliminary hearing that ran one day before Christmas resumed and is scheduled to continue for four weeks.
At a preliminary hearing, prosecutors present some of their evidence in a bid to convince a judge that he should send the accused to trial.
In this case, Shafia and his son already have conceded that there is enough evidence to commit them to trial. It means prosecutors don’t have to convince the judge to order a trial for those two.
But Yahya has not conceded.
A sweeping publication ban prohibits reporting of evidence heard at the hearing.
Yesterday Crown lawyers Gerard Laarhuis and Laurie Lacelle introduced two books of evidence, each about four inches thick.
Two witnesses were called, both police officers, and twice Yahya began to cry, loud enough that her sobs were audible from behind the glass of the prisoner’s box, where she was shackled at the legs, seated in a row, separated from her husband by a police officer, who, in turn, was separated from his son by another officer.
At least once, Mohammad Shafia appeared overcome by emotion. He wiped at his face with a tissue and buried his face in his hands and also appeared to be crying.
In the afternoon, Yahya’s crying stretched out for roughly 15 minutes, as she sobbed and dabbed at her face with tissue.
The evidence that provoked the outburst cannot be reported.
When a recess was called, she refused to leave the prisoner’s box, as is customary during breaks in the proceedings. Only her husband and son were escorted out of the courtroom.
She remained in the corner of the box, sobbing quietly, partly concealed from the courtroom by a large garden-shed sized structure that houses two translators.
The entire proceeding is being simultaneously translated into Farsi. Yahya and her husband speak Farsi.
Two translators sit inside the booth, connected to everyone in the courtroom through a network of wireless headsets.
The plans went briefly awry when the hearing began. The translator thought his job was only to translate testimony involving witnesses, so he did not begin translating any of the opening remarks.
“You have to translate everything, sir,” Justice Stephen Hunter said.
The hearing also began with only one of two translators in place, apparently because the second man got lost. He arrived almost an hour late.
Despite the initial hiccups, and occasional admonition from the judge to the lawyers to slow down to allow the translators to keep pace, the translation worked effectively for most of the day.
“I thought it went very smoothly,” defence lawyer Clyde Smith said, in an interview outside the courtroom, after the lunch break. “I was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly it went.”
Smith represents the son.
But the day ended abruptly just after 4 p.m. when one of the two translators interrupted the proceedings to tell the judge that he was having difficulty translating a dialect of Farsi.
Hunter asked the lawyers if they had a possible solution.
When no ideas emerged, he adjourned the hearing and asked to meet the lawyers behind closed doors.
A hearing within a hearing also began yesterday, as the judge is being asked to consider the admissibility of some evidence. Debate about the matter is expected to stretch into next week.
There was one other problem during the morning. After court had sat for roughly an hour and a half, Laarhuis pointed out to the judge that a woman who may be a witness was sitting in the public benches, despite an order the excludes all witnesses from watching the proceedings.
The woman was quickly hustled out of the courtroom.
A group of about half a dozen people who appear to be supporters or friends and family of the accused sat through the day’s proceedings.
In the morning, when Mohammad Shafia was first brought into court, he offered a slight smile and a wave to a woman among the group. She nodded in acknowledgment.
The hearing is set to resume today.

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Canal mass murder trial reaches critical stage

from left, Mohammad Shafia, 56, wife Tooba, 40, son Hamed, 19, at the Kingston, Ontario courthouse on July 23, 2009 (photos by Ian MacAlpine and Michael Lea/The Whig-Standard)

Birthdays behind bars. Tooba Mohammad Yahya turned 40 on December 12. Her son Hamed can now legally purchase alcohol in Canada, though it's possible he may never get the chance. He turned 19 on New Year's Eve. It's unlikely either Shafia family member did much celebrating. They are languishing behind bars at the Quinte Detention Centre, an overcrowded provincial holding centre just west of Kingston, as they wait for their day in court. Tooba, Hamed and father Mohammad Shafia are each accused of killing four other family members in a diabolical plot police say was carried out in June last year in Kingston, Ontario. That day in court looms. The case against them moves into a critical stage tomorrow with the commencement in earnest of a preliminary inquiry.

Here's my preview of what's to come in the prelim, published today in the Kingston Whig-Standard:

Monday, February 2, 2010
By Rob Tripp
The Whig-Standard

Defence lawyers representing three Montrealers accused of killing four family members who were found dead in a submerged car haven’t yet seen all of the evidence against the accused despite the looming start of a critical court hearing.

A month-long preliminary hearing begins in earnest tomorrow (tues) in Kingston for Mohammad Shafia, 56, his wife Tooba, 40, and their 19-year-old son Hamed. Each is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.

“There’s still some disclosure missing, some important disclosure,” defence lawyer David Crowe told the Whig-Standard. “The police are making best efforts and no one’s faulting the police or Crowns.”

Crowe would not say what evidence is missing. In Canada, prosecutors are required to provide an accused person with all relevant evidence that has been collected, in advance.

Crowe represents Tooba Mohammad Yahya, the only one of the three accused who has not conceded that there is enough evidence to send her to trial in the deaths of her children. Hamed Shafia and Mohammad Shafia conceded, on the first day of the preliminary hearing, held before Christmas, that there is enough evidence to order them to trial.

Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead in a car that was discovered early on the morning of June 30 last year, resting on its wheels in about three metres of water near a lock in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Mohammad Shafia’s first wife.

The mother and father claimed, in interviews soon after the victims were found, that the four must have died in a freak driving accident that happened as the family was passing through Kingston on the way home to Montreal. Siblings of Rona Mohammad allege that the four were victims of an honour crime, orchestrated by the father.

Police have never revealed the cause of death of the victims.

Preliminary hearings are held to allow a judge to decide if there is enough evidence to order an accused to trial. Despite the concessions by two accused, all three will be in Courtroom Number 1 at the provincial courthouse on Wellington Street tomorrow.

“Just because we conceded committal doesn’t mean that we’re waiving the prelim,” said Clyde Smith, the lawyer who represents Hamed Shafia. “That’s two different things.

“We’ve said to the Crown and to the judge, ‘Look, we’re not going to argue about whether or not there has to be a trial on this, we agree that the matter has to go to trial. In the meantime, we want to hear some of this other evidence just to get a sense of what it’s all about.’ ”

Smith said he has “zeroed in on some evidence that we need to understand a little better and that’s what we’re going to be doing for most of the month.”

Kingston lawyer Peter Kemp represents the accused father, who also has conceded there is enough evidence to send him to trial.

Much of what will transpire in the courtroom for the next four weeks will be done under a cloak of secrecy. Sweeping publication bans bar the media from reporting most evidence heard at preliminary inquiries.

The Shafia preliminary was originally expected to last 10 to 11 weeks.

“We’ve cut it down quite a bit,” said Crowe, predicting that most of the evidence will be complete by the end of February.

Everyone involved in the case is uncertain how the process will be slowed by one major obstacle.

The proceedings will require simultaneous translation between English, Farsi and, at times, French. The accused mother and father speak Farsi.

“The real difficulty is that we just don’t know how long the evidence is going to take to go in because of the translation equipment … but none of us has ever been involved in anything of quite this type before,” Smith said. He said roughly a dozen witnesses are expected to appear.

Conducting the hearing in Kingston required significant planning, including temporarily shifting all provincial court matters scheduled for Courtroom Number 1 to the county courthouse for February.

For the month, only the Shafia preliminary will take place in Courtroom Number 1.

A large, garden-shed sized booth with windows has been installed in the Wellington Street courtroom, near the prisoner box, to accommodate two translators. A large audio control board sits at the rear of the room and two pole-mounted transmitters are located in corners of the courtroom. Everyone in the room will have access to a wireless receiver box and headphones with a volume and channel control. One channel provides the live audio of the testimony. The simultaneous translation of the testimony can be heard on the other channel.

The Ministry of the Attorney General says there will be 30 headsets available daily to media and spectators, on a first-come, first-served basis.

“There’ll be people testifying in Farsi but there’ll also be people testifying in French and everything has to be translated into English and then, of course, everything that’s said in English or French has to be translated for the benefit of the accused so the potential for confusion is large, it seems to me,” Smith said.

Smith notes that judging the credibility of witnesses is about much more than just hearing their testimony.

“If you think about somebody watching a video statement, for example, and having it translated at the same time that they’re watching it, and trying to understand the nuances of what’s being said by the person on the videotape when, at the same time, you’re listening to a different voice, that’s not their voice, telling you what’s being said and presumably there’s a lag of some dimension,” he said. “It can’t be instantaneous so that the words of the person on the tape, once translated, may not match their demeanor and their facial expressions and their body languages and so on which, of course, is an important part of communication, so it’s a big challenge.”

Translation can be a factor in later debate about issues under appeal.

In September, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected a Nunavut man’s appeal of his conviction for first-degree murder, but the high court judges wrestled with the question of whether the transcript of the proceedings accurately reflected the context of what was said.

The trial of Salomonie Goo Jaw was conducted in Inuktitut and English, with simultaneous translation.

Jaw argued that the judge gave misleading instruction to the jury. The top court scrutinized the passage in the transcript showing the judge’s comments.

“The confusion surrounding this passage might be explained in part by the potential for transcription difficulties at trial,” Justice Louis LeBel wrote, for the 7-2 majority, noting that even individual sentences were at times broken down to facilitate translation.

“The transcription process is already reductionist in nature,” LeBel wrote. “The regular inflections in one’s voice, one’s emphasis on certain words and the natural flow of an idea or thought are not always captured by a written record.

“In the case of a trial conducted in two languages, the natural breaks between topics may not be as clear as usual, given the constant interruptions required for translation.”

Smith said he’s concerned about how translation will affect the Kingston case.

“I think its fair to say that everybody involved is worried about that issue,” he said.

Judicial officials already are looking ahead to a trial, which could begin in Kingston in early 2011, Smith said.

There have been discussions about trying to set aside court time for a trial and for hearings on pre-trial motions.

No one has been able to predict how long the trial might last, he said.

“This process we’re about to go through will help us a lot I think in understanding how much evidence is involved and what will be needed for the trial but more importantly, how much we’re slowed down by the translation and I don’t think anybody can tell that at this point,” he said.

Smith noted that murder cases in Kingston typically take about two years to get to trial.

“What I think everybody is trying to do is sort of keep the thing under control,” he said.

Smith said he does not believe that there will be any additional security in place for the preliminary inquiry.

“I think any concerns that there may have been about security were based largely on the fact that these people are from Afghanistan with all the [baggage] that that word carries but I think everybody has come to realize that this is just a family,” he said. “This isn’t the Taliban or a biker gang or international drug cartel or any of that kind of stuff; they’re not terrorists.”

The Shafia family moved to Canada roughly three years ago, settling in Montreal.

Kingston Police said the 10-member family, seven children and three adults, travelling in two cars, was returning home last summer from a vacation in the Niagara area when they stopped overnight in Kingston.

Their car, a black Nissan Sentra, was found submerged near the Kingston Mills locks early on the morning of June 30 by a Parks Canada worker. The four dead females were inside.

The mother, father and one son were arrested roughly three weeks later.

» All past coverage of the case

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Kingston canal murder prelim begins unexpectedly

For weeks now, everyone associated with the Kingston canal murder case, prosecutors, defence lawyers, court administrators, has been saying that the next major step in the process was set for Feb. 2 - the date on which the preliminary hearing was scheduled to begin for three Montrealers accused of conspiring together to murder three of their family members and a woman. Yet, that hearing, a significant stage in the process, inexplicably began yesterday at 3 p.m. in a Kingston courtroom (full story after the jump and at the Whig). It was a perplexing time and circumstance to start an important hearing in a complex murder case. The hearing wasn't on any court docket. It wasn't announced to media by anyone connected with the case. It's almost as if someone wanted the hearing to begin quietly, without any publicity. That didn't happen, since we caught wind of it at the Whig-Standard.

Kingston Whig-Standard
Saturday, December 12, 2009

By Rob Tripp and Paul Schliesmann
Whig-Standard Staff Writers

Two of three people accused in the Kingston canal murders have conceded that there is enough evidence to send them to trial.
In a surprise move, a preliminary inquiry that was set to begin in February began quietly in Kingston yesterday.
Tooba Yahya Mohammed and her 18-year-old son Hamed “conceded commital” with conditions, Crown lawyer Laurie Lacelle told Judge Stephen Hunter. It does not mean that a preliminary hearing will not be held.
Mohammed Shafia, her husband, did not concede to commital, meaning the Crown will have to prove, during the preliminary, that there is enough evidence to send him to trial.
The trio are accused of killing three family members, sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, and Rona Amir Mohammed. The four females were found dead June 30 inside a submerged car at the Kingston Mills locks on the Rideau Canal.
The surprise start to the preliminary hearing is an attempt to ensure that the proceeding isn’t moved to another city, the Whig-Standard learned.
Officials at the Ministry of the Attorney General in Toronto have suggested the case should be moved elsewhere, possibly Ottawa, for security and because Kingston’s courtrooms are technically inadequate.
Kingston prosecutors and defence lawyers involved in the case don’t want it moved.
Lacelle and Crown lawyer Gerrard Laarhuis declined to comment after yesterday’s proceeding ended.
Defence lawyers Clyde Smith,who represents Hamed Shafia, and David Crowe, who represents the mother, would not answer questions about the possibility that the case could be moved.
Smith said the concession by his client, which is subject to a condition that cannot be reported, means the preliminary inquiry will serve as a sort of discovery process in which lawyers test the Crown evidence and witnesses.
During a preliminary inquiry, prosecutors must show only that there is some evidence against the accused that could be used at trial.
“It’s a very low threshhold, as opposed to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which is necessary to get a conviction,” said Smith. “Often times it’s apparent to all concerned that it won’t be difficult for the Crown to get over that hurdle.”
The preliminary hearing is set to resume Feb. 2 and run through the month. Ten weeks of court time have been set aside for what is expected to be one of Kingston’s most complex murder cases, particularly because testimony and evidence must be translated in and out of Farsi, a dialect of Persian.
A translator sat yesterday in the prisoner box, between the accused mother and father, who were dressed in heavy coats and leg shackles.
Their son Hamed was seated about five metres away from them, on a bench behind the defence lawyers, because he speaks fluent English and did not need to hear the translation.
Dressed in a short-sleeved black golf shirt, green cargo pants and brown, open-toe sandals, the right side of his face appeared to be twitching uncontrollably through part of the proceedings.
None of the accused spoke.
Kingston Police detective Guy Forbes sat next to the two Crown lawyers.
Lacelle also entered as evidence three videotaped statements and three typed statements. They were the only exhibits filed before the hearing was adjourned.
A sweeping ban was imposed at the beginning of the hearing that prohibits the publication of any evidence.
The three accused waived their right to enter pleas and to have their charges read aloud in court, a practice that usually takes place at the preliminary hearing stage.
Each accused is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
Police have never revealed how the victims died.
Hunter thanked the lawyers for their work “to focus the hearing appropriately.”

» All posts on this story

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Accused canal killers make surprise court appearance

There was a significant and surprising development today in the Kingston canal mass murder case. Details will be posted here tomorrow and at the Kingston Whig-Standard site.

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Worrying signs in Kingston canal murder case

It's very early in the process to be whispering Askov in the Kingston canal quadruple murder case, but there are some worrying signs.

Askov was the name of one of four accused men in a landmark 1990 Supreme Court case in Canada. Extortion charges against the accused were tossed out because the system took too long to get them to trial. It took four years from the time they were arrested until the trial was ready to start. The country's top court said the delay was unreasonable. After the ruling, 50,000 backlogged criminal charges in Ontario were dismissed.

There are indications the Kingston canal case will be a marathon. I've heard from sources that there is a good possibility that police won't be able to hand over all of their disclosure in time for the start of the preliminary hearing, scheduled for Feb. 2 – Although that's not unheard of, this already is an incredibly complex case with a storyline that may cross three or more continents. The accused, Mohammed Shafia, his wife Tooba and their 18-year-old son Hamed, lived in Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates and perhaps Australia, before they settled in Canada two years ago.

Sources say it's possible that transcripts of surveillance wiretaps will be produced for the prelim, as needed, that is, some material might not be delivered until the day before that day's proceedings (the problem is the incredibly time-comsuming task of transcription and translation, followed by peer review for accuracy). Last week, the lawyers involved announced that the prelim may last up to 10 weeks. That's a long time for a preliminary hearing, though certainly not any kind of Canadian record (the Trudel/Sauve murder case in Ontario had a prelim that ran two and a half years). But a long hearing, complicated by what we might call on-time delivery of transcripts, could be problematic, leaving lawyers suddenly scrambling to adjust their plans for the days ahead in the prelim. That could lead to further delay, if for instance, a suddenly delivered transcript raises an issue that requires the defence to go in search of a technical/forensic or other expert.

And what about that estimate of a 10-week prelim? It comes from lawyers on both sides who have never been involved in a quadruple murder in which two of the accused speak a dialect of Persian that will require in-courtroom real-time translation to allow them to properly instruct counsel during the proceedings. Can those lawyers foresee the kinds of complications and problems that might arise?

Also, the defence lawyers say they don't yet have autopsy reports. Without that crucual forensic information, how can they predict how much time they're going to want to spend picking away at the prosecution's science? If, as I suspect, the prosecution will try to prove that the victims were drowned elsewhere, then placed in the car before it was dumped in the canal, there could be a titanic forensic battle in the works. Believe it or not, proving someone was drowned is difficult (there are no autopsy findings decisively indicative of drowning – see this British forensic science paper), so imagine the complexity of proving that a person found in a submerged car drowned, but did not drown at that site, and did not drown accidentally. Now magnify that complexity times four.

You can easily see this case is fraught with uncertainty and complications that could easily lead to delay.

So far, things appear to be moving smoothly – given that it has been less than three months since the arrests and a preliminary hearing is scheduled and a focus hearing (to discuss issues that will arise at the preliminary hearing) is underway. But very little has been said in court about the substance of the case, and that's where the battles will be fought.

Here's the latest story from the Whig-Standard on the first day of the focus hearing in the case, held Friday, October 9, and covered by my colleague Paul Schliesmann:

Kingston's canal murder case is turning out to be one of the most complex in the city's history.

Legal counsel agreed yesterday in the Ontario Court of Justice they would need a second focus hearing on Dec. 4. As well, the time needed for the preliminary hearing, to begin on Feb. 2, was increased from four to 10 weeks.

The complexity of the case is already evident.

"We have a better idea about what's going to be involved so we've set a considerable amount of time to be on the safe side," said Clyde Smith, lawyer for Hamed Shafia.

After the bodies of four Montreal women were found in a submerged car above the Kingston Mills locks in June, Kingston Police charged Mohammed Shafia, his wife Tooba Yahya Mohammed and their 18-year-old son, Hamed, with murder.

Three of the victims were the Shafias' daughters. The other was Mohammed Shafia's first wife.

The three co-accused appeared briefly before Justice Paul Megginson yesterday after the judge had met privately in his chamber with their Kingston defence lawyers and two attorneys from the local Crown's office for a focus hearing.

Focus hearings are about case management -- to prepare for the preliminary hearing and determine whether all relevant evidence will be available at that time.

The meeting in Megginson's chamber yesterday lasted for 50 minutes.

When the lawyers and judge emerged, Mohammed Shafia was brought first to the prisoners' docket. Handcuffed and wearing a blue, plaid short-sleeved shirt, he looked casually and calmly around the courtroom, then focused on the proceedings.

Shafia's lawyer, Peter Kemp, went around the glass partition to speak to him.

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Language has been a major issue in this case. While the son speaks English, both of the parents require the services of a Farsi translator in court. Farsi is a dialect of Persian.

As Kemp and Shafia conversed, Kemp eventually held up several fingers to demonstrate a number to which he was referring.

Megginson then questioned the separate appearances of the co-accused. "Why can't we have them up together?" he asked.

Assistant Crown attorney Gerard Laarhuis reminded the judge of the court-imposed non-communication order that prevents the three from having contact with each other.

The ban also applies to three surviving children living under child services supervision in Montreal.

As Laarhuis began to summarize the focus hearing results, Kemp interrupted and asked that a translator be sworn in. Once that was done, the translator stood beside Shafia at the prisoners' bench.

Kemp interrupted once more to ask that the Crown to be mindful of the need for the translator to keep up with the information he was presenting.

Kemp also requested that when they reconvene for the Dec. 4 focus hearing that the three accused not be brought to the courtroom. Megginson agreed to let them appear by video feed from jail.

It was Laarhuis who referred to the case as "complex," complicated by language issues, the fact that there are multiple co-accused and that the case crosses jurisdictions.

While the bodies of the four victims were found in Kingston, much of the investigation took place in Montreal where the family resided. They are originally from Aghanistan and came to Canada just over two years ago from Dubai.

Kingston Police were also alerted to information by siblings of the older victim, Rona Amir Mohammed, who live throughout Europe.

Laarhuis said it was possible that the preliminary hearing could take less than 10 weeks but added that "certain delay is inherent in this case."

He noted, as defence lawyers have in the past, that translations of interviews and police wiretaps and surveillance tapes have proven difficult and time-consuming. All translations must be peer-reviewed by two additional translators to ensure accuracy.

After about 10 minutes in the courtroom, Mohammed Shafia was taken out and his son Hamed brought in.

The young man, now cleanly shaven with his hair cropped short, also appeared relaxed. After being remanded he gave a quick nod and smile to his lawyer, Smith, before being led away.

His mother, Tooba Yahya Mohammed, was the last to appear.

Wearing the same style of black tunic she has worn for past court appearances, she had her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She mostly looked down at the floor and did not appear as relaxed as her son and husband.

She is represented by lawyer David Crowe.

Despite the non-communication order, the three defendants were brought to the courthouse in one police van.

"As I understand it, (it) has separate compartments in the back," said Smith in a media scrum following the appearances.

Smith said it was too early to tell whether any of the lawyers would apply for separate trials.

"It's always possible for people to bring applications for severance. I don't see that realistically happening," he told reporters.

He was also non-committal when asked if the defence might apply to have the court proceeding moved to another venue.

"There's been a lot of coverage of the case, yes. That issue has not come up yet. It's still early days," he said.

Smith said the defence lawyers are also still waiting for autopsy reports and "lots of things.

"(The Crown has) given us a lot of material and they're saying there's a lot more to come."

Timeline of the case
• June 23: The 10-member Shafia family leaves Montreal for a vacation in Ontario, telling neighbours they will be gone for 12 days. They leave in a silver Lexus SUV and a black Nissan Sentra.
• June 30: The Shafia Sentra is found submerged in eight feet of water just beyond the northernmost lock gates at Kingston Mills, part of the historic Rideau Canal system. Four bodies are in the car, three Shafia sisters: Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, Geeti, 13 and Rona Amir Mohammed, 50, who was the first wife of the father of the three girls.
• July 7: Kingston Police receive an email from Diba Masoomi in France, who says she is a sister of Rona Amir Mohammed. She says she and other family members are certain that the four women were the victims of an "honour killing," orchestrated by Mohammed Shafia, his wife Tooba and their oldest son, Hamed, 18.
• July 22: Mohammed Shafi, his wife Tooba and their son Hamed are arrested in Montreal while they are driving to a lawyer's office. They are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
• Oct. 9: Focus hearing held in judge's chamber in Kingston. It is a meeting to discuss issues that will arise at the preliminary hearing, set to start Feb. 2. Focus hearing will continue Dec. 4.

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How they died: The story of the canal killings

It has been roughly two months since police in Kingston, Ontario, charged three Montrealers, Mohammed Shafia, his wife Tooba and their 18-year-old son Hamed with a shocking crime. The trio are accused of mass murder, the killing of three of the couple's teenage daughters, including their eldest child, Zainab, 19, (above left, in a photo taken in 2007 in the United Arab Emirates with her friend Zubaida Siddique) and Rona Amir Mohammed, a 50-year-old woman who was Shafia's secret, first wife. Police have been silent since the arrests, but today, a glimpse inside the investigation, including revelations about the evidence that led police to their stunning conclusion. The story is here, at the Whig-Standard's site, and produced in full after the jump.

This story is the product of months of research, including dozens of interviews, detailed analysis of existing evidence and information from sources.

By Rob Tripp and Paul Schliesmann
Whig-Standard Staff Writers

It was portrayed as a terrible, almost inexplicable, driving accident.
Four women, including three teenage sisters, were found dead inside a submerged Nissan Sentra discovered June 30 in eight feet of water at the Kingston Mills locks on the Rideau Canal at Kingston.
A distraught Mohammed Shafia and Tooba Yahya Mohammed, parents of the dead girls, said their rebellious 19-year-old daughter Zainab likely took the family car on a joyride in the middle of the night, from a Kingston motel.
Two sisters, Sahar, 17, Geeti, 13, and the woman they called “Mother Rona” were with Zainab. Six family members slept unaware in a separate room at the motel.
Zainab was not licensed to drive. She had taken the car without permission before, her father lamented.
The foursome ended up at Kingston Mills, the southernmost lock station on the Rideau Canal.
To believe the parents’ account, Zainab must have driven a circuitous route around rock outcrops, trees, tables and ancient canal machinery, in an area off-limits to vehicles and unlit.
In the pitch black, she might have become disoriented or realized she had to turn around.
She might have backed the car dangerously close to a stone precipice, six feet and three inches above the water.
The right rear wheel may have slipped off the lip first, as the car reversed at an angle. When the left rear wheel cleared the edge, the car’s frame would have dropped onto the canal stonework.
A panicked driver might have slammed the floor-mounted shifter from reverse into forward, hoping the front-powered wheels would pull the car to safety, away from the ledge.
Instead, the car could have hung there precariously, until it eventually slid trunk first off the lip, into eight feet of dark water.
Police don’t believe this is what happened.
Investigators have gathered evidence that suggests the Sentra, perched on the stone lip of the canal, was pushed over the edge by another vehicle that butted into it nose to nose.
The women inside would have no chance of escaping the vehicle – if they were already dead.


***

On June 23, neighbours of the big Afghani family – the clan of 10 who occupied the second floor flat in a mostly Italian neighbourhood in northeast Montreal – watched them leave on vacation.
They pulled away in two vehicles, seven children and three adults, piled into a compact black Nissan Sentra and a silver Lexus SUV, leaving behind a Pontiac Montana mini-van.
By this time, a diabolical murder conspiracy had been underway for seven weeks, police claim.
“They were leaving for 12 days,” neighbour Joyce Gilbert recalled. “That’s what they told me.”
The Nissan was unfamiliar.
Upstairs neighbour Maryann Moufrage had not seen it until two days before the family departed.
On June 29, six days into the trip, 19-year-old Zainab Shafia, the oldest of the seven children, talked by phone with her boyfriend, 27-year-old grocery store clerk Hussain Hyderi, who was at home in Montreal.
They talked of the pending announcement of their engagement, set for July 1.
That day, another member of the vacationing clan, Rona Amir Mohammed, called her brother Mohammed Amiamiri in Vienna, Austria.
It was 9 p.m. Kingston time when she reached him. She said the 10 family members were in Toronto at a hotel. She’d been told they would drive home to Montreal at midnight.
Rona Mohammed was puzzled that she had been invited along on the trip in the first place.
She and the three teenage girls would be found dead roughly 12 hours after her phone call to her brother.
On Canada Day, the day Zainab Shafia was to announce her engagement, Kingston Police held a news conference, saying they were treating the deaths of the four women found in the submerged car at Kingston Mills as “suspicious.”
“We want to make sure we cover off any outstanding leads,” Staff Sgt. Chris Scott said. “It certainly could be death by misadventure ... but we want to make sure every lead is covered off.”

***

The apparently grief-stricken Mohammed Shafia and his wife Tooba Yahya Mohammed have said in interviews that they arrived in Kingston at roughly 1 a.m. on June 30.
They were fatigued, they said, from the long drive from Niagara Falls and booked two rooms at a motel. The family has never publicly identified the motel where they stayed.
Zainab, Sahar, Geeti and Rona Mohammed stayed together in one room. The six other family members stayed in the other room, the parents said.
The mother and father said that soon after they checked in, Zainab came to their room and asked for the keys to the Nissan, ostensibly to retrieve clothes.
She must have taken off with her sisters and Rona Mohammed in tow on the joyride that ended in tragedy, the parents suggested.
The Whig-Standard learned that at 2 a.m. on Tuesday June 30, Mohammed Shafia and his son Hamed appeared at the front desk of the Kingston Motel East at 1488 Highway 15.
It is the middle of three motels along a five-kilometre strip of road between Highway 401 and Highway 2 to the south.
Two single-storey buildings partially encircle an outdoor swimming pool. The water is unheated and cool. The motel is popular with tourists.
The Shafias rented two rooms near the office in the main building.
They paid cash for the rooms and, almost immediately, the two men left the motel in the Lexus, turning north onto Highway 15.
By now, it was well after 2 a.m.
From the motel to the Kingston Mills locks is less than a five-minute drive, following a route north on Highway 15, past the Highway 401 interchange, to Kingston Mills Road.
Sometime in the next few hours, Hamed Shafia left Kingston and drove home to Montreal, alone in the Lexus, to the family’s home at 8644 rue Bonnivet.
Nine family members were still in Kingston.
In the middle of the night, upstairs Montreal neighbour Maryann Moufrage and her sister heard “a big bang like a garage door.”
Police say that Hamed Shafia left Kingston “during the early morning hours” of June 30 but they have not explained why they believe he drove back to Montreal.
Investigators would soon be asking questions about damage to the front end of the Lexus.
Hamed Shafia parked the luxury vehicle inside the garage on rue Bonnivet and returned to Kingston in the green mini-van. He and his mother and father appeared at Kingston Police headquarters on Division Street at 12:30. They reported four family members and their black Nissan missing.
Police had known for hours, by then, that a black car with a Quebec licence plate was submerged in eight feet of water at the Kingston Mills locks. A civilian diver had seen what he believed were the bodies of two women in the car.
Rideau Canal staff had called police early that morning.
“We don’t know what we have right now, it’s kind of an unusual entry point in the water,” Staff Sgt. Chris Scott said, in an interview just after noon that day.
Rideau Canal staff also were puzzled. They were accustomed to finding stolen and discarded cars and motorcycles in a nearby pond, which was easily accessible from Kingston Mills Road. A car dumped into the 30-foot deep pond might go undiscovered for a year or more, until one of the infrequent drainings.
But a vehicle at this spot was unheard of.
Veteran lock operator John Bruce was at his usual station, manning the sluice wheel and gates of the upper of the four locks at about 8:30 a.m. that day when he noticed something unusual.
Two boats already had moved part way through two lower locks, as they made the nearly 47-foot climb from the Cataraqui River below to Colonel By Lake.
Bruce saw something in the water of the lake, just beyond the mammoth wood doors of the northernmost lock.
“I noticed oil bubbling up,” he recalled.
When he looked more closely, he saw the outline of a car. He recognized the distinctive round silver badge of Japanese carmaker Nissan.
Bruce had not yet seen the chrome plated plastic letters, an ‘S’ and an ‘E’ lying on the grass just behind him, on the 25-foot wide ledge that runs along the edge of the lock.
He had taken no notice of two scuff marks at the base of the wood step beside him, attached to the edge of the lock gates.
He realized it would be impossible to operate the locks. The sunken car was positioned immediately in front of the lock gates, its front end facing the stone wall, as if it had plunged backwards into the water.
The boaters who had been moved halfway through the flight of locks were told they’d have to go back.
John Moore was disappointed. He and his son and his friend were tired after a four-day boating and camping trip. They were anxious to get through the locks on their way home to Manotick, a small community on the Rideau just south of Ottawa.
When Moore, an experienced diver who had his gear with him, heard that a submerged car was blocking their passage, he volunteered to go underwater to get the licence plate number. Canal staff had no reason to be cautious. They believed it was a prank – a stolen car dumped into the water by thieves.
Moore descended into the murky water and found a chilling scene. He saw an unbelted woman’s body, floating in the front compartment of the car.
“Her feet were down and her back is arched,” Moore said, describing the position as the “dead-man’s float.”
He saw one body in the rear seat.
It wasn’t until later that afternoon, when Ontario Provincial Police divers arrived, that investigators realized there were four bodies in the car.
The divers videotaped the grisly underwater scene, then removed the bodies from the car, before it was hoisted out by Rogers Towing service.
A startling discovery was made: The car was in first gear, though it appeared to have slid off the canal ledge backwards into the water.
The driver’s side manual window was cranked down a few inches.
When the car, likely a 2004 base model Sentra, was hauled away on a trailer, significant damage was visible.
The front edge of the hood, just right of the centre-line was punched in. A dent and accompanying scrape marks were evident in the bumper just below the front left headlight. A large gouge could be seen on the rocker panel below the driver’s side door.
On the quarter panel, just above the front left tire, was an oval-shaped dent, outlined by scuff marks.
There was perplexing damage to the rear end of the car.
John Bruce said he checked several times, but could not find any corresponding damage to lock equipment.
The left tail-light lens was shattered and a line of scrape marks and dents extended below it into the bumper cover.
There was a large, round dent just above the left, rear tire.
On the lower left corner of the trunk lid, the letters S and E from the car’s ‘SENTRA’ nameplate were missing.
Police say the damage was not caused by a joyride by Zainab and that the Sentra was driven that night by Mohammed Shafia, his wife Tooba and their son Hamed.
Early on the afternoon of June 30, police officers descended on the Kingston Motel East and seized control of two rooms.
Police guarded the motel for the next three days.


***

On July 1, investigators examined another damaged Shafia vehicle.
Around noon, Joyce Gilbert, unaware of the tragedy in Kingston, returned from shopping to find a female Montreal police officer outside the home on rue Bonnivet where she lived downstairs from the Shafias. The officer asked Gilbert if she had heard any noises in the night.
She couldn’t recall hearing anything.
Gilbert went inside. About half an hour later, she heard footsteps overhead in the Shafia unit, one of four in that half of the duplex.
She went to investigate, knowing the family wasn’t due back from its vacation for days.
Police from Montreal and Kingston were in the driveway.
“They asked me to move my car because the Lexus was in the garage,” recalled Gilbert.
She noticed Mohammed Shafia, in obvious distress, across the street, standing by the green van.
She did not see any of the other family members.
“He was sad. He looked lost,” she said. “The police of Kingston took the Lexus out [of the garage] and they were taking pictures like CSI. They were taking pictures inside and outside and they were asking [Mohammed Shafia], ‘Where did you get this scratch?’ ”
Gilbert spoke to Mohammed Shafia by herself while the police photographed the vehicle. He told her the shocking news.
“I went to see him and ask him what happened,” she said. “He said, ‘Three of my daughters are dead and my cousin is dead.’ ”
Other neighbours gathered as Gilbert started to cry and Shafia continued to explain the tragedy.
“The dad told me ... the son came with the Lexus, he had an accident here [in Montreal], and he left the Lexus here and he took the green van back [to Kingston].”
Gilbert eventually got a closer look at it.
“I know the front of the Lexus, the light was all broken. The light on the left,” she said
Police have said they linked the Lexus to the locks, though they would not explain the connection.
When the entire Shafia family returned to Montreal the next day, July 2, a neighbour saw Tooba Yahya sitting in the green van, “crying and hitting herself – like beating up on herself,” Moufrage said.

***

Police suspected murder from the beginning.
“Since the time of the recovery of the four victims, this incident has been the subject of an extensive and resource-intensive homicide investigation,” Police Chief Stephen Tanner would later reveal.
Thirteen Kingston police officers worked on the case full time. They sought help from the RCMP, the OPP and municipal forces in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
Though the role of other forces has not been revealed, other agencies have specialized expertise in surveillance and wiretapping that Kingston Police do not have.
Police have not released any information about the post mortems on the victims or the results of other tests that would have been performed.
At an Aug. 28 court hearing for the three accused, the most recent, defence lawyers said they had not received autopsy reports.
But family members have suggested publicly that the victims appear to have drowned.
Mohammed Shafia said, in an interview July 3, that he identified the bodies of his daughters and Rona Mohammed late June 30, the day that they were pulled from the car.
“We went, my wife and I, [to] identify the [bodies] at the hospital,” he told le Journal de Montreal. “They had no marks of violence or ... injuries.”
Zarmina Fazel, an aunt of Tooba Yahya Mohammed, said autopsies performed on the victims were “negative” for anything suspicious and they simply drowned.
“No shooting, no hitting, no poison, just water in the stomach,” Fazel told the Toronto Star.
Police and prosecutors likely already know the cause of death of the victims, though final forensic reports have not been compiled.
Investigators may also have a well developed theory of the manner of the deaths.
Is it possible the victims were drowned elsewhere, then placed in the Sentra before it was pushed into the water?
Would a murderer who plans to kill four people and conceal the murders as an accidental drowning in a vehicle, risk the chance that any of the victims might escape the sinking car?


***

One week after the four women were found dead, Kingston Police received a stunning e-mail that suggested a motive for murder.
On July 7, Diba Masoomi wrote to police from her home in Niort, France, casting doubt on the theory that the deaths were accidental.
Masoomi claimed she was one of four siblings of Rona Mohammed who live in Europe.
“We are convinced that this is a crime of honour, organized under the guidance of [Mohammed Shafia], his wife Tooba and their oldest son Hamed,” Masoomi wrote.
In an interview with the Whig-Standard, Masoomi said her sister was afraid for her life. She claimed that Rona was regularly threatened by Shafia. Other siblings said she was beaten.
Masoomi’s email also contained another shocking revelation.
Mohammed Shafia had publicly presented Rona Mohammed as his cousin, but she was his first wife, Masoomi claimed.
She said the couple wed in Afghanistan roughly 30 years ago. When Rona could not bear children, Shafia took another wife, a practice accepted in that country.
Masoomi said that her sister also had told her that Shafia believed his daughter had dishonoured him by marrying a young Pakistani man, Ammar Wahid, in Montreal.
Masoomi said her sister told her that she believed Shafia was plotting to kill her and Zainab.
The daughter had apparently, repeatedly offended her old fashioned father, refusing to wear a traditional veil and other modest clothing in keeping with strict Muslim tradition.
She fled the family home in May or June for roughly a week, allegedly after she was beaten. Rona Mohammed’s siblings say Zainab reported abuse by her father to child protection authorities in Montreal.
Around the same time, she married Wahid at a Montreal mosque but the paperwork necessary to make it official was not filed.
Zainab soon fell in love with another man, a 27-year-old cousin, Hussein Hyderi, who was heartbroken when she didn’t return from the family vacation.

***

Exactly three weeks after the bodies were found, on Tuesday evening, July 21, around 6 p.m., Kingston and Montreal police officers and child protection agency staff arrived at the Shafia home on rue Bonnivet.
Neighbours saw camera flashes going off inside the home.
The contingent of police and other officials did not leave for more than three hours.
Only Mohammed Shafia, his wife Tooba and son Hamed remained at the house.
Alarmed at the surprise raid by authorities, they made plans to visit a lawyer the next morning at 10 a.m.
At 9 a.m. July 22, neighbours saw the three Shafias and Tooba’s brother, who lives in Montreal, climb into the family’s green mini van and drive off.
The brother’s grey van was left in the driveway, where it remained until late that night.
It is likely that police were fully aware of the family’s movements and plans because of surveillance and also through listening devices. It is believed the mini-van was bugged.
Before the family could get to the office of lawyer Waice Ferdoussi, police intercepted the vehicle and arrested all four people.
One person was released without charge.
The Shafias were taken to Kingston and locked in holding cells. They were each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.

» All previous posts on this story

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New revelations in Kingston canal killings

It's been two months since police in Kingston, Ontario, charged a Montreal mother, father and son with killing four family members.

We still don't know how three teenage sisters and a 50-year-old woman died. Or do we?

In this space tomorrow, and at the Whig, new revelations about the police probe into Kingston's first ever mass murder.

How did the Nissan Sentra with four women inside get into a shallow canal backwards? The evidence tells us.

One day after the car was pulled out of the canal on June 30, police were investigating damage to another vehicle.

The day the car was pulled out of the water, police began guarding a Kingston motel.

Three people are charged in the canal killings, but they they aren't the only people who were arrested.

It's the most complete public examination of the mass murder at Kingston Mills.

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Accused parents in canal killings denied access to kids

Accused canal killers Mohammed Shafia and his wife Tooba Mohammed Yahya have been stripped of their right to try to talk to their three other children, who are in the custody of child protection authorities in Montreal. Here's the explanation from today's story in the Whig-Standard.

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Canal killings expose crime stat frailties

Kingston has become one of the most dangerous places in Canada, if you believe – wrongly – that crime statistics tell you whether a city is safe (see previous post about the 'safety fallacy'). The deaths of four women, found in a submerged car in a canal in the eastern Ontario city (photo above shows the spot where the car was found), were murder, police say (click here for all of Cancrime's coverage of the murder case). The charges mean Kingston's homicide rate for 2009 (regardless of whether the accused are convicted), will soar to one of the highest levels among all cities in the country.

If no other murders are recorded in 2009, Kingston's homicide rate will be roughly 3.4 per 100,000. The highest rate in the country in 2007 was recorded in Saskatoon at 3.6.

So when the number crunchers at Statistics Canada put out their annual homicide survey in 2010 (for 2009 crimes), it will likely show Kingston with one of the highest murder rates in the country. Does that mean it will be reasonable and sensible to start calling Kingston one of the most dangerous cities in the country? Of course not, but that's what could happen, particularly when you consider the debate prompted by the latest StatsCan crime figures. The national crime counting agency released its annual survey of police-reported crime rates last month, including the new crime severity index.

The preposterous posturing for position as Canada's safest place – at least based on the police-reported crime stats – began in earnest after the stats were released.

» The Halton region (east of Toronto) claims it's one of the safest places in Canada.
» Guelph, Ontario, a mid-sized city about an hour drive west of Toronto, says it's the safest place in the country.
» The Waterloo region, in southwestern Ontario, boasts it is among the safest areas in the country.
» The Telegraph Journal crows that New Brunswick continues to be among the safest provinces in the country.
» Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, somewhat shly asserts that it is a "fairly safe place to live."

Kingston may be able to boast it's the homicide capital, once the 2009 figures are tallied. The canal deaths will be counted as murders even if the charges are withdrawn or if the three accused are acquitted at trial. Statistics Canada counts a crime as murder if police had enough evidence to lay a charge, regardless of the outcome.

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Police revisit scene of canal killings

Have police investigating the murder of four people found dead in a car in a canal in Kingston, Ontario, reconsidered some of their physical evidence? The photos above that I shot recently reveal that investigators may be taking a closer look at the scene where the victims were found.

The photos were taken a little more than a week ago at Kingston Mills, the spot where a sunken Nissan Sentra was pulled from about eight feet of water on June 30, with four bodies inside. The main photo is a closeup of the small set of wood steps that are connected to the lock doors where the sunken car was found (inset pic for scale). Police recently returned to the spot and outlined two scuff marks or scrape marks on the steps with what appears to be white chalk. Those scuff marks, in which the grey paint appears to have been scratched off, were visible in the days after police took down their cordon, but the white highlighting only appeared recently. Sources confirm that police officers outlined the scuff marks. It could lead you question whether police missed something during their first forensic analysis of this scene, or whether they have simply gone back for another look. The car found in the canal is believed to have plunged into the water by passing through a narrow opening at this spot, between these steps and an iron sluice wheel (not visible in the photos) that is about eight feet north of the steps. It appears that some part of the Nissan scraped against the steps during its plunge.

Whatever police have concluded about these marks, and others visible on the adjacent stone edge, likely is being passed on to defence lawyers. Police and prosecutors recently gave their first batch of disclosure to the three lawyers representing the three accused killers. Disclosure is the legal term for the handover to an accused person and his/her lawyer of evidence gathered by investigators, so that the accused can prepare a full answer and defence to the charge or charges. Disclosure is required, cemented in Canadian law by a landmark 1991 Supreme Court case. Unlike TV crime shows, Canadian prosecutors can't produce surprise evidence or witnesses during a trial, without having first briefed the defence. Say "Stinchcombe" to any prosecutor or police officer and you'll get a knowing nod or gesture, acknowledgment that the case involving Alberta lawyer Bill Stinchcombe forever changed the legal landscape when it comes to the requirement to hand over all "relevant" material to the accused.

But the Stinchcombe principal doesn't mean that police simply pour all of their evidence into a big pot and hand it over to the accused within days of arrest. It's not unusual, particularly in Kingston, and particularly in complex murder cases, for disclosure to continue to flow into the hands of a defence lawyer right up to the time the trial begins. That happens, in part, because police often do a considerable amount of work building their case, after the arrest. Kingston investigators are still digging for inculpatory material they can find against the three members of the Shafia family who are accused of killing four other family members and perhaps, as the photos above show, they're reconsidering evidence they've already reviewed.

» Read all of Cancrime's coverage of the Kingston Mills murder case

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Police keep canal killing evidence under wraps

The Montreal mother and father accused of killing three of their children convinced a court today that they should be allowed to communicate with their three other children. Mohammed Shafia and Tooba Mohammed Yahya appeared in a Kingston courtroom, by video, from the detention centres where they're being held. Their son Hamed, 18, also appeared today.

The court agreed to amend a non-communication that had been imposed that forbid the parents from communicating with their other three children, who were taken into custody by child protection authorities in Quebec when they were arrested July 22. The change means the couple can talk to the children, if the child protection authorities approve it. At today's hearing, it also was revealed that Kingston Police have told defence lawyer Peter Kemp, who represents Mohammed Shafia, that they won't provide any evidence to him until Aug. 12 at the earliest. Without that disclosure, the defence lawyers can't prepare for possible bail hearings (see previous post about that process).

All three accused were ordered to appear by video again Aug. 14.

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First legal drama unfolding in canal killing case

Lawyers on both sides of the remarkably complex canal murder case already are reconnoitring a labyrithine legal landscape. Strategy is crucial in any murder, but in a case with three accused, four victims, complications of language, culture, international publicity and allegations of a barbaric motive of "honour," issues are magnified a hundredfold. The first legal drama is unfolding now.

This first spectacle revolves around the bail hearing (or hearings) for the three accused. Mohammed Shafia, 56, his wife Tooba, 39, and son Hamed, 18, remain behind bars in two different detention centres – Ottawa and Napanee – since their arrest July 22 in Montreal, though they are set to appear in a Kingston courtroom by video link this afternoon. In a murder case, the accused is not automatically entitled to a bail hearing and bail is not granted in a simple hearing held before a justice of the peace. Release might be granted after a more thorough hearing before a superior court judge. The accused begins the process by applying for the right to appear before the judge. In legalese, the event is known as a show-cause hearing, because the accused has to show cause why he or she should not be kept behind bars while awaiting trial. Unlike the practice for less serious crimes, the onus is on the accused murderer to demonstrate why he should be freed. For less serious crimes, the burden is on the prosecution to demonstrate why the accused should be kept locked up. The three Shafia accused have not yet applied for bail, which also has a fancy legal handle – judicial interim release.

The three are charged jointly with the same crimes, as co-accused, but each has a separate lawyer to represent individual interests – if, for example, one seeks to co-operate with prosecutors by providing evidence against the other two, it would be crucial for that person to have a lawyer in a position to negotiate on his or behalf exclusively.

It's not yet clear whether the prosecution will seek to conduct one bail hearing, assuming the accused all seek bail. At a hearing, some evidence is presented and some witnesses called, perhaps investigators. Since each accused is represented by a separate lawyer, those three lawyers could each take a turn cross-examining each prosecution witness, asking questions pertinent to each individual client. The accused also can call evidence, including witnesses who might testify about their upstanding character, good deeds in the community and the certainty that they won't bolt if released.

To complicate possibilities in this case, three separate hearings could be conducted, one for each accused, at which some or all of the prosecution witnesses give evidence. Prosecutors could present the same evidence at each hearing. That evidence, and those witnesses, could be subject to three different sets of cross-examination. The evidence doesn't have to meet the tough trial test of "beyond a reasonable doubt." The judge can base his or her decision on evidence considered "credible or trustworthy."

This raises the intriguing possibility that Crown witnesses could be tested by the defence on the consistency of their evidence when presented three different times. The prosecution also would be forced to show some of its hand, if it believes it has a stronger case against any one or two of the accused.

Of course, all of what transpires at this bail hearing (hearings?) will remain hidden from public view, perhaps for years, as the case winds its way through the courts, since virtually all bail reviews and bail hearings are subject to sweeping publication bans, that forbid publication and broadcast of evidence heard until the case is over.

Don't expect much from today's court appearances in Kingston, other than a brief glimpse of the three accused. Defence lawyers are still waiting for prosecutors and police to begin the long and complicated process of disclosing their evidence.

» All of Cancrime's coverage of this story
» Video tour of the canal death scene

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