Honour on Trial (12 page)

Three of the surviving Shafia children were removed from the house and taken into protective care. Hamed, Tooba, and Mohammad were ordered out of the house while police conducted a search inside. They were told they were suspects in the murders of Rona, Zainab, Sahar, and Geeti. But police did not arrest them that night. Instead, with three of the younger children safely out of the house, they planted a listening device in the house telephone.

The next morning, a family friend picked up Hamed, Tooba, and Mohammad at their house. They were going to consult a lawyer about getting their children back. A Montreal police surveillance team was watching as they left the house and drove off. The Shafias never got to the lawyer's office. At a busy intersection, their vehicle was cut off and the arrests made. The three were taken to a Montreal police station, charged, then immediately transported to Kingston, three hours away.

The interviews/interrogations…

WHEN they first appeared at Kingston Police headquarters on June 30, 2009, to report four family members missing, Mohammad Shafia, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, and their son Hamed Shafia had a simple story to tell. They arrived late in Kingston; Zainab borrowed the keys to the Nissan to get clothes from the trunk; and they woke up that morning to find the car and the four women gone.

All three were interviewed by police that afternoon, and officers noticed discrepancies in their stories. Later, when they were arrested on July 22 in Montreal and officially charged with the four murders, the interrogations that followed in Kingston highlighted more inconsistencies. The following are excerpts from both the June 30 interviews and July 22 and 23 interrogations.

Mohammad…

Mohammad Shafia was interviewed by Detective Geoff Dempster starting around 3:45 pm on June 30. He told Dempster about the family trip to Niagara Falls and how they were heading home to Montreal in the early hours of June 30 when they decided to take a room at the Kingston East Motel.

At one point, said Shafia, "my wife said that [she is] very dizzy and cannot drive and will pull over somewhere. You guys get a hotel, eh, so we can go. We got here and this motel was expensive, too … The motel is very expensive because we got tired and could no longer drive."

He told Dempster that they decide to go with the second motel they come across after exiting Highway 401. "Yes, at the second place, and we paid the money, and signed and everything. My wife was with the girls, these four people."

He said that the four women who later died went to room No. 18. Then Hamed announced he was going on to Montreal.

"Last night?" Dempster asked, during the June 30 interview.

"We got settled in, we got our place here," said Shafia, "and he said, I have to go, since tomorrow I have to work on the building or something, and, if necessary, then I will come back … He was going alone because he had work and we didn't want to go. We wanted to stay for two or three nights. Right."

Dempster asked what happened next.

"Then, I woke up in the morning, uh, … I saw that the car is not there," said Shafia.

After more questioning, however, Shafia said that initially it was he and Hamed and three of the younger children who went to the Kingston East Motel to sign in while Tooba waited in the Nissan with the four women further up Highway 15. Dempster also learned from the interview that while Hamed left for Montreal overnight in the Lexus, he returned to Kingston in the minivan. At 5 pm the interview ended.

Shafia was interrogated on July 23 by Royal Canadian Mounted Police inspector Shahin Mehdizadeh. An Iranian by birth, Mehdizadeh was brought in from British Columbia to conduct the interviews with Shafia and Tooba in Farsi. By this time, Mehdizadeh had already spoken with Tooba and Hamed.

Early in the interview, Mehdizadeh asked Shafia why someone would want to kill his daughters. Shafia replied: "For us there wasn't any reason. For us they were pure and sinless kids. They were our children."

He then complained to the officer that someone had likely called the police to accuse him of killing Zainab. He told Mehdizadeh that it was probably her boyfriend, Ammar, who actually threatened to kill her. Mehdizadeh made it clear that police didn't believe the deaths were accidental.

"Someone has killed them," he said.

"Yes," replied Shafia.

"Someone has pushed them."

"This killer should be found," Shafia agreed.

Mehdizadeh confronted Shafia with the information from the cellphone records showing someone had travelled to the Kingston region on June 27 in the middle of the Niagara Falls vacation. The two went back and forth for several minutes as the officer tried to establish exactly who had gone where that day. Shafia admitted to nothing.

They turned to the events of the early morning hours of June 30 when the Nissan went into the water. "I, my son, my wife, I, all of us were in the motel," he insisted.

They talked about the situation with Zainab wanting to marry Ammar Wahid, then Shafia switched to Hussain Hyderi, the new fiancé.

"We would have given," he said of the second arrangement. "We were very happy." Hardly the sentiment he expressed in the wiretaps.

Mehdizadeh asked who Rona was to him. "She is my cousin," Shafia replied. The officer showed him a picture of their wedding day.

"No, this is, it was, her birthday or something. This is not marriage. I haven't married her."

"Her family says that you had married her."

"No."

Mehdizadeh told Shafia they had wiretap recordings of him saying nasty things about his daughters. "You have been very upset with these girls," he suggested.

"No."

"I myself have heard it that you have said it," said the officer.

"No, [that] I might have said it. I never say such words [about] my daughter. I have said [about] my daughter, for example, that [going] to the water, she killed the other children. She has done a wrong thing," Shafia replied.

Mehdizadeh pondered why 13-year-old Geeti had to be killed.

"None of them had done anything," said Shafia.

Then Shafia was told about the pieces of headlight from Kingston Mills being matched up with the pieces found in the Lexus.

"It's impossible," Shafia said, not once, but twice.

Mehdizadeh warned Shafia that he wouldn't be able to go into court and continually deny the accusations and the evidence by just saying no over and over. When Mehdizadeh talked again about the wiretap evidence, Shafia told him he knew a device had been planted in their home.

"Today, even a child would know it that you have put something there. If he knows this, he wouldn't say these words. Is he talking these words so you can record them and come here and tell us?"

"You didn't know this," said the officer.

"These are childish words," Shafia told him. Then he insisted he even knew about the bug in the Pontiac van.

When Mehdizadeh accused him of beating his children, information gathered from the children and other people, Shafia continued to deny.

"The children are lying," he said. Then he pronounced his love for the dead women. "These four people have gone. [I] swear to God, I loved them with my heart. Alas, if I say these words, it isn't good. I wish God would have taken my life and spared their lives. I would have been ready … I am not a criminal."

The interrogation ended in a heated exchange. "You are also a liar," said Mehdizadeh. "Your son is also a liar. The son is like the father."

"No," said Shafia.

"Both of you are dishonourable people."

"No."

"The honour of your family is in the hands of your women."

"No, you are not saying the right word," said Shafia.

Tooba…

Tooba Mohammad Yahya does not come across as a typically submissive Afghan Muslim wife. A plain woman, she is not as pretty as her co-wife Rona, nor as compassionate. Stubborn and severe, she frequently frustrates her interrogators with her obstinacy. She is often sharp and sarcastic during questioning, critical of her husband and excessively protective of her son Hamed. She shows little emotion for her three dead daughters.

Tooba was the last of the three to be interviewed by Dempster on June 30. Her account of the events of early that morning were slightly more detailed than her husband's.

"Me, very bad vomiting. I couldn't drive so I stopped the car," she said. "But my husband didn't know that I am vomiting. I said, myself, I will stop and you guys go ahead and get a motel and come get me. Me with [the] four [others]."

Tooba said she went directly to her room in the Kingston East Motel to sleep.

"Not too long after, my older daughter came and knocked on the door and asked for the keys to pick up some clothes from the car trunk," she said.

It was her husband who alerted her to the missing women and car the next morning.

She told Dempster about Zainab's being anxious to return to Montreal. Then, abruptly, she said: "Excuse, she told me a couple times [to] give [her] the keys, so [she] can drive. Give [her] keys to drive, but I didn't."

Tooba said she knew Hamed was going to Montreal that night, she thought for some business with the family's shopping plaza. She wasn't awake when he left. "If I knew I would have gone with him," she said. This despite being so sick in the car that the whole family had to pull over to stay in Kingston for the night.

Dempster asked Tooba what she thought happened with her daughters and Rona. She had already dropped the hint about Zainab's demanding to drive the car despite not having a licence.

"No matter how much I think, I don't know how they dared. They left with the car," she said. "Always, always a girl who would [have her way]. She would do whatever she wanted to do."

In other words, Zainab was headstrong and taking the car would not be out of character.

Dempster asked again for a reason why they would have taken the car.

"Only desired, only desired to drive a car. She desired a lot. I think she thought, my mom and dad are asleep, let's go for a drive and return. That's it."

Dempster then left the interview room and returned with another question for Tooba. "Were you there when the car went in the water?" he asked.

"I was not there. [After] they got the key from me I didn't know anything," she replied.

Dempster tried to determine where Hamed was at the time Zainab supposedly came for the car keys. Tooba suggested Hamed and Shafia heard the Nissan drive away. Then, after further questioning, she backed away from this notion and said, "We didn't know that they were gone at that time," adding that everyone assumed the girls had gone to their rooms.

This didn't make sense, of course, because if Hamed then left for Montreal, he would have known the Nissan was already missing. Dempster then suggested that Hamed got in the Lexus and went after the girls. Tooba said she didn't know anything about this because she was so tired.

Tooba's interrogation on July 22 with Shahin Mehdizadeh of the rcmp was far more intense. It began at 5:31 pm and did not end until nearly 1 am the next morning. Mehdizadeh told Tooba that they no longer needed to discuss how the deaths took place, only why the Shafias carried out the murders.

The officer showed Tooba a picture of Kingston Mills and asked if she could remember stopping there on the way to Niagara Falls. She said they did not. He asked about June 27 and whether Mohammad or Hamed left the family in Niagara Falls at that time. At first she said no, then recalled Mohammad's being gone and that he had likely taken Hamed's cellphone with him.

Mehdizadeh asked her to talk about her daughters, particularly Zainab.

"The girls were good girls," she said, "but the problem was between Zainab that I have already mentioned. She, Zainab, loved a Pakstani boy and he also said that he loved her. They had asked us [for] her hand in marriage, too."

Tooba recounted the botched marriage and the annulment and the pressures that fell on her. Zainab's insistence on marrying appeared to be the breaking point for Tooba, borne out in the court testimony provided by her brother, Fazil. She described Mohammad as a good provider who spent money on his children, "but he is not so attached to them." She insisted that he never hit them, then relented, saying he did sometimes.

They moved on to discuss Rona. Mehdizadeh asked about her relationship to Mohammad.

"She is the daughter of my husband's uncle," Tooba said evasively. "I was 17 years old when I married him. I … Rona was … Rona was there, but as his uncle's daughter. When I was asking, he was saying, 'my uncle's daughter,' but I haven't noticed anything that she had something with him."

This, of course, was an incredible statement to make. She insisted that after 20 years of being married to Shafia, she knew nothing about his marriage to Rona, though Rona was at their wedding and was living in their home.

"When I came, he was single," she said.

More than two hours into the interrogation, Mehdizadeh explained how the Nissan could not have fallen over the edge of the canal without being pushed in. "Do you think that this is still an accident now?" he asked. "This is murder. Whoever had done this, he did it to kill them. Do you agree or not?"

Tooba said, "No, this is right; what you are saying is right." She insisted Shafia never told her about a plot to kill the children. "If he had told me that he would kill the children, especially Zainab, I would go to the police with my children," she said. "Believe me, I would have done this."

Mehdizadeh showed Tooba a series of photos of the Lexus headlight reconstruction and told her that the damage matched with the rear of the Nissan.

Tooba picked up the narrative: "…Now the important thing is to specify the person — who was that person who hit it with the other car, pushed it into the water … This is important, isn't it?"

Mehdizadeh agreed, suggesting it was Hamed, because he later took the Lexus to Montreal.

"No," she insisted, "before it [the Lexus] was with his Dad … before it was with his dad … they were changing [cars]." Then later she said, "… It is very important to specify at that moment, who was in that car. This is more important in my view."