Evidence in Shafia murders was so ‘overwhelming,’ alleged trial errors would be irrelevant: Crown

                           

TORONTO — The evidence against a father, mother and son convicted of murdering the couple’s three daughters and another woman was so “overwhelming” that it could only have led to guilty verdicts, Crown lawyers argued Friday as they sought to block the trio’s attempts at new trials.

Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Yahya and their son, Hamed, claim the trial judge made several errors including allowing “highly prejudicial” expert evidence on so-called honour killings.

But those alleged errors — if they were to be accepted — were minor, the Crown suggested to the panel of three Ontario Court of Appeal judges.

“The evidence against the appellants in this case was overwhelming,” said Jocelyn Speyer. “Given the nature of errors that have been alleged and their relative insignificance in the context of this very large trial, the verdict would necessarily have been the same.” In June 2009, the bodies of Shafia and Yahya’s daughters — Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13 — and Shafia’s first wife in a polygamous marriage, 52-year-old Rona Amir Mohammad, were found in a car at the bottom of the Rideau Canal in Kingston, Ont.

Shafia, Yahya and Hamed argued the deaths were the result of a tragic accident.

Crown prosecutors contended the murders were committed after the girls “shamed” the family by dating and acting out, and Amir Mohammad was simply disposed of.

The most important evidence in the case, Speyer argued, lay at the scene, where the car carrying the dead females was found.

The Shafia trial heard that the car, a Nissan Sentra, could not have entered the canal on its own and must have been pushed.

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