It’s no accident victims were female
by Christie Blatchford

Ms. Yahya, her 56-year-old husband Mohammad Shafia and their 18-year-old son, Hamed, are charged with four counts each of first-degree murder and four of conspiracy to commit murder in the June 30 deaths of three of their flesh-and-blood – respectively, daughters and sisters Zainab, 19, Sahari, 17, and Geeti, 13 – and Mr. Shafia’s first wife, Rona Mohammad, whom he had been passing off for decades, when need be, as his “cousin.”

Fifty-two-year-old Ms. Mohammad and the three girls were found inside one of the family cars, which most curiously and against all odds, had ended up in about three metres of water at the nearby Kingston Mills locks of the Rideau Canal – its front end inexplicably facing the stone wall of the northernmost lock, which meant it would have gone in the water ass-backwards.

In the immediate aftermath of this terrible discovery, Mr. Shafia and Ms. Yahya presented, as my Montreal colleague Ingrid Peritz and others reported at the time, as grief-torn parents – though even then, it should be noted, they were blaming the oldest, Zainab, painting her as a bit of a rebel who didn’t have her driver’s licence but occasionally had taken the car out for a toot.

Combining the modern sensibility of crying for the television cameras with the great Afghan tradition of telling any listener what he wants most to hear, Ms. Yahya said then, between sobs, the family had come to Canada for the children (“In Afghanistan, no study … no rights”), while Mr. Shafia generously allowed, “It’s not Canada’s mistake, it’s my family’s mistake.”

G&M disabled comments on this report from Blatchford.