Honour on Trial (7 page)

For years, Tooba had worked to wrest control of the family finances from Rona and supplant her in Mohammad's bed. The few months already spent in Canada, where Tooba was officially listed as Shafia's only wife, had cemented Tooba's matriarchal dominance in the household.

"She would make me so miserable and upset," Rona writes in her diary. "Sometimes she wouldn't speak to me, so I would go and speak with her because she had my passport. Tooba used to say, 'Your life is in my hands.'"

Family life…

THE transition to life in Montreal wasn't easy for the family. The children had to attend a French-language school even though they had studied at an English-language school in Dubai. Rona spoke French but had few social opportunities to use her linguistic skills. Mohammad and Tooba spoke virtually no English and no French. The children, as happens in many immigrant families, became the official interpreters.

Before they left Dubai, the family had also made a pact: no one was to date until they finished their education. When they were old enough, they could marry. In the meantime, no dating.

Hamed seemed to have no problem with this rule. He wanted to study business in college. As the oldest son, his path seemed clear: he would likely enter the family business of importing and exporting. By the age of 18, he was hopping planes on his own and heading to Dubai to meet up with his father. His command of English meant he would conduct the online sales. He was arranging for tradespeople to do work at the $2 million family-owned shopping plaza in Laval. Plus he had a driver's licence.

His older sister Zainab did none of these things. Her freedom was severely restricted and monitored. She never learned to drive and never had a driver's licence. But neither Zainab nor her younger sister Sahar subscribed to the family's monastic existence. They liked western fashion. They enjoyed socializing. They liked being in the company of boys and flirting and falling in and out of love, like most teens their age. These desires would result in serious repercussions for them and created ugly conflict within the household.

Sahar…

WITH their voices silenced beneath the frigid waters of the Rideau Canal, it was left to a handful of witnesses from various parts of their lives to speak for the three Shafia daughters at the murder trial of the girls' parents and brother.

Sahar Shafia was the second oldest daughter of Mohammad and Tooba Shafia, given by her mother to Rona to raise forty days after her birth. By all reports a favourite of her father, the beautiful Sahar had thick dark hair, clear skin, warm brown eyes, and perfectly shaped eyebrows. But in photographs, there is often a faraway look in her eyes, as if she were dreaming of another life.

On November 23, 2011, a vice-principal at Antoine-de Saint-Exupéry school in Montreal, Josée Fortin, took the witness stand to recount a disturbing meeting she had with Sahar.

Staff had alerted Fortin on May 7, 2008, to possible problems the girl may have been facing at home. Fortin had trained as a social worker before becoming a teacher. "What I do recall is we'd spoken initially about the wearing of the veil," Fortin recalled. "She found it very difficult to wear the veil."

Then the interview took a much more serious turn. Sahar, 16 at the time, told Fortin about a suicide attempt she had made just 10 days earlier, using pills. Sahar told the vice-principal: "I wanted to die. I had enough. I wanted to die." Sahar related other troubling details about her home life. She told Fortin that since October 2007, around the time of her 16th birthday, she had been "emotionally rejected within the family" and had little contact with other family members.

The ostracism would have begun just a month before Rona, her adoptive mother within the family, was cleared to rejoin the family in Canada. "Within the family there was an order issued that they should not talk to her," said Fortin.

Sahar also complained that her older brother, Hamed, had physically abused her on two occasions — once hitting her and another time pushing a pair of scissors across a table that struck her in the arm. Fortin testified that she did note an injury on Sahar's arm.

"She didn't feel well from an emotional standpoint," the vice-principal recalled, describing the case as rating "emergency one status." Teacher Antonella Enea had also been sitting in on the interview. Fortin decided to seek assistance from Batshaw Youth and Family Centres, the English-language service for youth protection in Montreal.

She telephoned the agency, which put intake worker Evelyn Benayoun on the line with Sahar to let the girl explain her situation. "Sahar told me she wanted to die because she was extremely sad," said Benayoun. "There wasn't just one problem. There was the suicide. There was the physical abuse."

A Batshaw social worker, Jeanne Rowe, arrived at the school that afternoon to talk to Sahar. Fortin couldn't recall who got there first, the parents or the social worker.

"Sahar had visual contact with her mother and father and brother," said Fortin. "It seems [that] she saw them and I saw a child that started changing — going back on what she said … I noticed this change of attitude. The change of attitude surprised me and I was wondering, do I have before me a child that [is] afraid?"

She distinctly remembered Mohammad Shafia coming through the school door, looking like a storm cloud. "the parents were very angry about the complaint that was relayed to the youth protection agency," said Fortin.

Then Mohammad, as he would do with Geoff Dempster in his first interview with Kingston Police after his daughters' deaths, proclaimed he was a successful businessman and a good provider for his children.

"The father says he's worked hard for his children," recounted Fortin, "that he's building a house on the south shore."

From her first meeting alone with the girl that May 7, Batshaw child protection worker Jeanne Rowe, who had more than 20 years of experience in the field, classified Sahar's case as "code one," meaning: "It's very urgent and you have to investigate it the same day," said Rowe during her court appearance.

"When I met her she was very scared. She was crying and really didn't want to meet. She didn't give me any information," added Rowe. "She was very, very scared about her parents knowing about the report."

Sahar began recanting what she'd told her vice-principal and teacher. The rejection and alienation in the family? Not true. The suicide attempt? Not true. The physical and verbal abuse by Hamed? Again, not true.

"Everything in the report, she denied in that first meeting," said Rowe. "I went over those allegations with her and she denied them all." Throughout the half-hour interview, Sahar was described by Rowe as inconsolable and crying "profusely."

Rowe then recalled Tooba arriving at the school along with Zainab. The mother and social worker met and Rowe repeated the allegations Sahar had made to the school staff. Tooba told her that she wasn't aware of any rejection by the family, only that Sahar wanted to be left alone much of the time. She wasn't aware of her daughter's having taken pills. "She adamantly denied that Hamed was physically or verbally abusing Sahar," said Rowe.

Rowe also asked about a three-week period during which Sahar didn't attend school. Tooba explained that she and Shafia had taken their daughter on a two-week trip to Dubai. When they returned, she was too tired to go back to school so they let Sahar stay home for another week.

Rowe said she had finished talking to Tooba, then Zainab, and was leaving the school when Mohammad arrived. "He was quite angry," said Rowe. "He wanted to know the source of the report. He said he would speak to his lawyer to find out the source of the report."

Again, all of Sahar's earlier allegations were dismissed, this time by her father. "Everything he denied very openly. He didn't give me any explanations for anything," said Rowe.

Shafia flatly rejected the idea that Hamed had any authority to discipline his siblings. It was Hamed who provided the translation between his father and the social worker. Rowe asked Hamed about Sahar's allegations against him. "He denied everything," she said. But in a household as patriarchal as the Shafias', with Mohammad away for long periods of time, it's not surprising that Hamed, the eldest son, would stand in for his father in the role of disciplinarian and "protector" of his sisters.

The next day, May 8, Sahar was back at school. Rowe returned on the 9th to interview the girl. The transformation was remarkable. "She was not crying. She was seemingly happy. She was wearing the hijab. The first meeting she was not wearing the hijab," said Rowe.

Sahar also admitted for the first time to Rowe that she had, indeed, taken pills. She said she sometimes became sad. "She said, 'I didn't want to kill myself. I was just sad.'" She claimed that she merely slept off the effects of the pills.

"She was happier — or seemingly happier," recalled Rowe, though she felt Sahar was being "very cautious and minimized the situation." Sahar had also spoken to her mother, who told her daughter she must always come and talk to her when she was feeling sad. "And she told her brother the hitting must stop."

Zainab…

BEFORE these eruptions at school in the spring of 2008, there had been another incident at the home on rue Bonnivet that threw the family into turmoil and pitted siblings against one another.

Zainab Shafia, Mohammad and Tooba's first child, was a gorgeous young woman. All the Shafia children were striking, with their dark hair, clear complexions, and penetrating eyes, but beautiful Zainab had a sultry look in her almond-shaped brown eyes, and her lips were full and heart-shaped. She liked to dress fashionably and take pictures of herself — some of them sexy and provocative — on her cellphone. At her English-language high school, Zainab had caught the attention of Ammar Wahid, a young man of Pakistani heritage. Like many smitten young men before him, Ammar went way out on a limb on February 14, 2008.

"It was Valentine's Day so I sent her a Valentine's card," he recalled in court two and a half years later. "I wrote a little note saying I kinda liked her."

Ammar got what he wanted — a response from Zainab. But it wasn't what he expected. Instead of an OK for a date or some kind of meeting, he received an e-mail from her, outlining the "rules of friendship." Above all else, they had to avoid the prying eyes of Zainab's younger brother, Hamed, who also went to their school.

She e-mailed Ammar: "Be aware of my bro… and if my bro is around act like a complete stranger. I will call u when we r at skool from the public telephone."

Meeting up was difficult because of the restrictions on Zainab's freedom, even though she was 18 at the time. "During the weekend it was kind of tough to see her because she was not allowed to go out," said Ammar.

Ammar received other e-mails from Zainab, giving him careful instructions. If Hamed was at her locker, Ammar was not to come around. "I don't want to give him the slightest idea we are friends," she wrote.

About a month after the start of their clandestine relationship, Zainab invited Ammar to her house. Her parents were in Dubai with Sahar. Rona was in the home; Zainab introduced her to Ammar as her "dad's sister." Then, Zainab suddenly realized that Hamed was coming home.

"As soon as I walked in the house she told me to hide in the basement," Ammar told the court. "I was hiding behind a box and her brother directly came and saw me there." It was a strange encounter. Hamed walked up to his sister's boyfriend, shook his hand, then asked him to leave.

Ammar walked away and called a friend to come pick him up. He contacted Zainab on his cellphone. "She just said, 'Leave, don't come back now. He's pissed and he wants to come after you.'"

Zainab never returned to school. "Her brother told her until her father and mother came back, he wasn't allowing her to go," said Ammar. "She told me her brother's not letting her out [to] do anything. He's just keeping her at home."

Hamed continued to go to school and the two young men would pass in the hallway.

"We wouldn't talk or anything," said Ammar. "We just looked at each other and walked away. That was pretty much that."

With their relationship interrupted, Zainab and Ammar corresponded occasionally by e-mail. She said she wanted to see him again. He wanted to see her, too. She was going to night school, but not alone. She was accompanied by Hamed and she was wearing the hijab. But in an e-mail to Ammar dated December 5, 2008, Zainab showed some of the independent spirit that probably got her killed. She wrote: "I wear at nite coz i go to a coarse at nigh with him sux/ well i changed the way i wear hijab its even more better than be4/ i take out a bit of ma hair and i tie the hijab at back and put on some big circle earings."

In the spring of 2009, Zainab and Ammar arranged a meeting at the library. Sahar was there and they all went for lunch at a McDonald's. "She told me her dad was mad at her for what she did. That's why they took her out of school," Ammar recalled her saying. "It took some time for them to forgive her so she could go back to school." Zainab said she was spending most of her time in her room, only coming out for meals.

Their friendship rekindled, Ammar and Zainab began making plans. "You help me and we'll leave together," she told him. Ammar said he needed a job first, then he would get an apartment for them.

But Zainab was in a hurry.

Zainab's escape…

APRIL 17, 2009, was a day of utter turmoil in the Shafia household. Tooba had come home to find a note from Zainab, saying she was leaving home and didn't want any contact with them. Ammar had come earlier in the day to take her to a women's shelter, Passages, a refuge for women aged 18 to 30 having difficulties in their lives with issues such as violence or drug abuse. Zainab was interviewed by Passages worker Jennifer Bumbray that afternoon and officially classified as a victim of "family violence."

"I do remember her speaking of physical violence by her brother," Bumbray recalled at the trial. Zainab also talked about conflicts with her father. "She didn't feel safe. She was being sequestered in her house and wasn't allowed to go to school."