Murder Most Foul

Finally, the trial is underway for three members of a family, all of whom conspired to murder other members of their intimate family group. Four young girls, and a mature woman of Afghan extraction who found that life in Canada could be as fearfully dangerous as life in Afghanistan. And whom, despite all appeals for help, were failed by the very public social institutions set up to serve their desperate need.

This is a dominating, honour-obsessed father enraged by his three young daughters' audacious streak of independence. This is a manipulated weak, and nasty mother who supported her husband's decision that if their daughters would not be brought to heel they would be sacrificed to the family's honour. This is an elder brother, fashioned in the image of his unforgivingly misogynistic, controlling father.

Not only did they plot to murder three teenage girls, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and 13-year-old Geeti, but along with them the man's first, barren wife who was far more of a caring mother to the three girls than their biological mother. Rona Amir Mohammad loved the three girls, and feared for their safety and hers, knowing how the girls' resistance to their parents' insistence that they behave like good Muslim daughters infuriated Mohammad Shafia and Tooba Mohammad Yahya.

The girls, born of Afghan parents but living in Canada, wanted to be like other Canadian girls, with the same personal and social freedoms that their peers enjoyed. They had no wish to be married off to men chosen by their parents; they rebelled against being forced to wear the hijab. They wanted to wear makeup, wanted to be free to meet with friends, wanted to be free to have male friends. They were threatened and they were beaten.

They sought help, to escape from the deadly trap that their home had become. Child welfare in Quebec became involved at the behest of school authorities who were advised of the frightening problems facing these girls. Their father's constant threats to kill them related to the child protection worker assigned to them. But they were interviewed in the presence of their parents and thus intimidated, said nothing further, so the interviewer closed the case.

They still reached out imploringly for help. The youngest of the girls, 13-year-0ld Geeti, wanted to be taken from her parents' home, to be placed with a foster family. She began acting out to gain the attention she needed, and her behaviour was noted, but for that behaviour she was punished, first by the school, then by her parents. The older sister ran away to a shelter for abused women, but returned home when her mother cajoled her by promising she could marry the boyfriend she loved.

Brother Hamid used his father's laptop computer to search out vital information on how to conduct a murder plot, as well as information on how their holdings as a wealthy family could be controlled if they were incarcerated as punishment for murder.

In the end, the father bought a black Nissan, which the family used along with another family vehicle, a silver Lexus, for a holiday trip to Niagara Falls. On their way back to Montreal they stopped overnight in Kingston, Ontario. There, the Nissan containing the three girls and their "aunt", Rona Mohammad, was pushed over the locks by the Lexus, into the water where all four drowned.

"May the devil s--- on their graves" Mohammad Shafia spit out to his second wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, after the bodies of the three girls and his first wife were recovered at the Kingston Mills lock. "They committed treason themselves. They betrayed humankind. They betrayed Islam. They betrayed our religion ... they betrayed everything."

May they, poor betrayed spirits, rest in the peace they did not know when they were among the living.