Restoring Family Honour -- Honour Killing

"You shared during the [Parole Board] hearing that you are now more confident, more in control of your life and now know your rights. The board understands that you can now make your own decisions and follow your own values. You are no longer being controlled by your husband, and even filed for divorce."
"You shared at the hearing that since you became incarcerated, you have discovered freedom. You feel guilty for the death of your daughters, and for leaving  your surviving children behind. You also shared that after you got married, your husband would not let you talk [to] or see your mother anymore. She was eventually diagnosed with Alzheimer's and would not recognize you anymore, referring to you as her niece instead of her daughter. She died before you had the opportunity to see her again, and never got to say goodbye."
"...The Board is of the opinion that permitting you to grieve your mother may also help you process the death of your three daughters."
Parole Board of Canada

Tooba Mohammad Yahya walks out of the police van at the Frontenac Court courthouse in Kingston Ontario on October 20, 2011. Lars Hagberg / Montreal Gazette

Tooba Mohammad Yahya, Afghan-born and living in Montreal with her family before being convicted of murder of her three teen-age daughters and her husband's first wife, had appealed to the Parole Board to allow her an escorted temporary absence from the Quebec federal penitentiary where she is serving four consecutive life sentences, to enable her to attend her mother's funeral, and to see her surviving three children other than her son, serving, along with his father, the same consecutive four life sentences for first-degree murder. She was given leave to do just that 'to help process the death' of her daughters. Sympathy given to someone who most certainly did not deserve any.

Honour killing victims Sahar Shafia, left, Zainab, top, and Geeti Court handouts

For someone who denied she was even at the scene of the murder which had been well planned. The Shafia family daughters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with their father's first wife Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, drowned while inside one of the family cars, when their father Mohammad Shafia deliberately pushed the car with the four women into the locks at the Kingston Mills. Yahya had no love for the woman who first married Shafia and who was barren. Yet that woman lovingly helped to raise Yahya's seven children and the girls confided in her, trustingly regarding her as their second mother who helped them where their mother failed to.

Rona (left) and Sahar Shafia are shown in this photo released by the courts on Nov. 22, 2011. (CP)

The girls wanted a normal social life. They had no wish to wear a headscarf, wanted to wear make-up and wanted to associate with boys as well as girls. The oldest girl, Zainab, had a boyfriend, enraging her father. Threats and punishment failed to convince the girls that they must behave in a manner their parents expected of them. The girls insisted on wearing westernized clothing, using makeup, wearing jewellery, consorting with boys and their father became ever more infuriated, enlisting his then-20-year-old son to watch what they did and report on them.

The four women were reported missing by their family while on a family trip to Niagara Falls. But the Nissan with the four women was discovered lying at the bottom of the Locks, with the four victims floating about in it, and an intensive investigation was immediately launched after the vehicle was dredged out of the Locks. The couple and their son were finally arrested on July 22, 2009 at their home in the St-Leonard borough of Montreal. They were imprisoned and went to trial where father, mother and son were convicted of murder in 2012.

Maintaining innocence, Yahya filed an appeal of her conviction. But in the request for temporary escorted leave for her mother's funeral a different story emerged. The parole board was informed she hated her mother for being responsible for her marriage to Shafia at age 17, and that her mother had assented to her marriage to a man who already had a wife. She also admitted that she was at the scene of the murder when her husband and son murdered her daughters and her husband's first wife for her role in allowing the girls to confide in her, and for supporting their unfilial and dishonourably irreligious behaviour.

A car (pictured) found at the bottom of the Rideau canal in eastern Ontario seemed to trace a very deliberate path, a murder trial heard on Oct. 21, 2011. (CP)

On their return drive from Niagara Falls they had decided to stay over in Kingston and looked for a motel. At the Locks, over the Rideau River, Yahya sat in the family Lexus while the three girls and their second mother sat in the family Nissan. This was when their father in the early hours of the morning darkness drove the Lexus into the Nissan, shoving it into the river, where it plunged into the water. Yahya claimed she attempted to convince her husband not to proceed with the murder, but that he responded he was intent on killing them, despite her pleas. She insisted she had no knowledge of her husband's and son's pact to kill the four 'unIslamic' women.

Sympathy? For a woman who continually plagued her daughters, and along with her husband and son threatened them, making their lives an utter misery? For a woman who hated her mother for helping to arrange her marriage at age 17, when in the culture from which they came parents sought a well-to-do suitor for their daughters, and multiple marriage partners were not unknown. Yahya's mother, given their societal culture, wanted the best for her daughter and in marrying a wealthy businessman she certainly enjoyed comfort and a luxurious lifestyle.

For her part as a mother, Yahya appeared happy to leave the care and upbringing of her children to a woman she despised and ill-treated. Yahya denied her daughters vital emotional support as much as she denied them the nurturing as a mother that they enjoyed from their substitute mother. She opted to be complicit in the oppressive atmosphere the girls lived in, denying their human rights. Her complicity in their deaths is undeniable. Full parole will be available to this woman in 2034. She claims to feelings of 'guilt' at her daughters' deaths.

Not emotional devastation, not the bleak misery of knowing that three beautiful young girls were deliberately denied a future; that a woman with whom they all lived as an extended family, lavishly expending love on the children was murdered out of sheer malice; not the desolation of anguish that she would never see their bright faces, hear her children's vibrant voices; celebrate milestones of happiness and achievement over their future lives, but 'regret'.

Regrettably, such monsters of emotional detachment exist.

Shafia family, father Mohammad, son Hamed, wife Tooba  (Photograph by Vincenzo D’Alto)