A court in Canada launch probes into a honor killing of an Afghan family after a jury found an Afghan father, his wife and their son guilty of killing three teenage sisters and another wife in what the judge described as “cold-blooded, shameful murders” resulting from a “twisted concept of honor” in a case that shocked and riveted Canadians.

The three sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar 17, and Geeti, 13 became the victim of honor-killing by their own family by dishonoring their family by defying its disciplinarian rules on dress, dating, socialising and using the internet.

According to Canadian officials, the Afghan family recognized as Shafia family had shifted to Canada in 2007. The family left Afghanistan and had been to Australia, Pakistan and Dubai for the past 15 years.

It took 15 hours for the Canadian prosecutors to find Mohammad Shafia 58, his wife Tooba Yahya 42 and their son Hamid 21each guilty of four counts of first-degree murder.

The alleged murders will face an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years based on the first-degree murder.

Meanwhile, the three guilty  defendants again declared their innocence in the killings of sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar 17, and Geeti, 13, as well as Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, Shafia’s childless first wife in a polygamous marriage.

The Canadian security officials found the bodies of victims on June 30, 2009, in a car submerged in a canal in Kingston, Ontario, where the family had stopped for the night on their way home to Montreal from Niagara Falls, Ontario.

The Canadian judges emphasized on the premeditated murder as the defendants drowned their victims elsewhere on the site, placed their bodies in the car and pushed it into the canal.

According to Robert Maranger Ontario Superior Court Judge, the evidence clearly supported the conviction.

Mr. Maranger said, “It is difficult to conceive of a more heinous, more despicable, more honourless crime. The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your completely twisted concept of honour … that has absolutely no place in any civilised society.”

In the meantime, defence lawyers of the Shafia family claim that the deaths were accidental.

Defence lawyers said, the Nissan car accidentally plunged into the canal after the eldest daughter, Zainab, took it for a joy ride with her sisters and her father’s first wife.

Hamid 21 the son of the family said, he watched the accident, although he didn’t call police from the scene.

The verdict by the court was called as unjust by Mohammad Shafia and his wife Tooba.

Speaking through a speaker Mohammad Shafia and his wife Tooba said, We are not criminal, we are not murderer, we didn’t commit the murder and this is unjust.”

The mother of the family said, “I am not a murderer, and I am a mother, a mother.”

Patrick McCann defence lawyer of Hamid said, he was disappointed with the verdict, but said his client will appeal and he believes the other two defendants will as well.

Howerver, prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis welcomed the verdict.

Speaking outside the court after the verdict was announced by the court Laarhuis said, “This jury found that four strong, vivacious and freedom-loving women were murdered by their own family in the most troubling of circumstances.”

According to reports, Zainab, the oldest daughter, was forbidden to attend school for a year because she had a young Pakistani-Canadian boyfriend.

The court was also told, Zainab fled to a shelter, terrified of her father.

The court was also told, the parents of the victim girls found condoms in Sahar’s room as well as photos of her wearing short skirts and hugging her Christian boyfriend, a relationship she had kept secret.

According to the prosecution, Geeti was becoming almost impossible to control: skipping school, failing classes, being sent home for wearing revealing clothes and stealing, while declaring to authority figures that she wanted to be placed in foster care.

Meanwhile, it was noted in Rona Amir Mohammad’s diary the first wife of Mohammad Shafia that her husband beat her and “made life a torture”, while his second wife called her a servant.

The honor killing was further revealed to the court after the prosecution presented wire taps and mobile phone records from the Shafia family which shows Shafia spewing vitriol about his dead daughters, calling them treacherous and whores and invoking the devil to defecate on their graves, were a focal point of the trial.

Mohammad Shafia in one of the recordings said, “there can be no betrayal, no treachery, no violation more than this.”

He said, “Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows … nothing is dearer to me than my honour.”

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