We’re now faced with what has been called another “honour killing” in this country at the hands of the victims’ own parents, and apparently a dissemblance about how many wives the father had.
The deaths of Zainab, Sahab, and Geeti Shafi, and their “aunt” Rona Mohammed, were never treated as an accident by police, but this was the postulated theory by father Mohammed Shafi and mother Tooba Mohammed Yaha. Even an aunt of the family, Zarmina Fazel, was questioning who would go for a drive at midnight and do so around a virtual maze of obstacles to practice her driving.
It should have been a large tip-off that the parents were willing to blame the daughter, Zainab, for the accident. No parent who had lost their daughter would be placing blame with such frivolity as these two were.
Meanwhile, a lot has been revealed about the family since the investigation has gone on, including the nature of the family itself:
Kingston police confirmed on Thursday that Rona Amir Mohammad was Mohammad Shafia’s first wife, and that he was also married to Ms. Yahya. A relative who sent an anonymous e-mail to the Montreal Gazette alleged that Mr. Shafia was “disgraced” by his daughters’ behaviour in Canada, and that he wanted his first wife to return to Canada while hiding the fact they were married. The author of the e-mail said Mr. Shafia married Ms. Yahya as his second wife, because Ms. Mohammad could not have children.
Nothing about the autopsies performed on the victims since the beginning of the month has been released yet. The two parents, and their son Hamed, are all under arrest and charged with murder as well as conspiracy to commit murder. The family that slays together stays together, but as long as there are enough children to go around.
How is it that Shafia was able to sneak in a second wife in the first place? Apparently the act of polygamy was legal in Afghanistan, where they are originally from, but also legal in the United Arab Emirates, where they lived fifteen years prior to moving to Canada. I have a doubt that it was Canada’s decadent lifestyle that had corrupted his children in such a short amount of time, unless maybe they were being forced to read Heather Has Two Mommies in school and it didn’t quite mean what Mr. Shafia had intended.
I’d like to congratulate the Kingston Police for having such a sensitive chief:
“Some of us have different core beliefs, different family values, different sets of rules; certainly these individuals, in particular the three teenagers, were Canadian teenagers who have all the freedom and rights of expression of all Canadians,” Kingston police Chief Stephen Tanner said at a press conference on Thursday. “Whether that was a part of a motive within the family – based on one of the girls’ or more of the girls’ behaviour – is open to a little bit of speculation, but combined with other investigative issues as well.”
Confusing a statement to the press with a chance to make a happy-time speech, the man on the job for eight months has already belittled his own police force. Open to a little bit of speculation? No, it’s your job to figure out what the motive was, or you have no case. The relatives seem pretty sure that it’s an honour killing, as many of them have come forward and stated that the father was threatening the daughter for having a romantic relationship with a boy from Pakistan. The woman, Diba Masoomi, is supposedly the sister of Rona Mohammed and is convinced that this was a multiple honour killing.
Bear in mind, too, that the sons were either conspiring to commit murder against their own sisters, like Hamid, or were willing to lie about his father’s polygamy, like another son Ali, who told the Kingston Whig-Standardthat Rona Mohammed was an “aunt.” I might be willing to entertain that the father was simply lying to the younger children about his relationship to Mohammed, but it’s unlikely that he can keep that up for so many years.
It’s also extremely unlikely that the daughters were enjoying all of the freedoms and rights that Chief Tanner decided he has the power to bestow upon them. Maybe we all have different rules for families and so on, but we all live under one set of laws in this country. Law enforcement in this country failed miserably by sanctioning the import of polygamy, and even ignoring it in Bountiful is just as bad. Ignoring our laws wrapped up in the false guise of religious practice makes for a two-tiered justice system. It’s further letting down these women by flippantly ignoring motives for the crime. Make a serious charge, Chief Tanner, or vacate that seat so a real man can occupy it.
