Police sources confirmed the dramatic development in the case Wednesday, 22 days after a black Nissan Sentra was found in roughly three metres of water near one of the four locks.What led to this has to be Canada's own negligent stand on polygamy among Muslims, if memory serves me correctly.
Three teenage sisters were found dead in the car, Zainab Shafi, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with a 50-year-old woman, Rona Amir Mohammed.
La Presse newspaper in Montreal said three people who were heading to Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport were arrested yesterday morning.
Initially, police said the case was suspicious but that they had not found evidence of foul play.
It's not clear what charges are being laid, but The Whig-Standard learned that Kingston Police have been investigating, for at least two weeks, the allegation that the deaths were an honour killing.
"We are convinced that this is a crime of honour," Diba Masoomi told Kingston Police, in an email sent to the police chief's office roughly two weeks ago.
The newspaper obtained a copy of the email from Masoomi, who lives in Niort, France. She claims she is the sister of Rona Amir Mohammed and she also offered the stunning allegation that the dead woman was the first wife of Mohammed Shafi, the father of the three dead girls.
She provided photos that she claims show Shafi and Mohammed at their wedding in Afghanistan 30 years ago. The couple never divorced.
Masoomi said the marriage has been hidden since the family moved to Canada two years ago.
In interviews after the deaths, Shafi and the woman he presented as his only wife, Tooba Mohammed Yhaya, said Rona Mohammed was a cousin.
Ali Shafi, a 15-year-old brother of the dead girls, told the Whig-Standard in an interview July 8 that Rona Mohammed was his aunt.
"For some time, my sister, as well as the Shafi couple's oldest daughter, Zainab, had been receiving death threats for social, cultural and family reasons," Masoomi's email to Kingston Police states.
In an interview through translation, Masoomi, who does not speak English or French, explained that Rona Mohammed has stayed in regular contact with relatives in Europe, and has told them she feared for her life.
"She was really afraid," Masoomi told the Whig-Standard, through her daughter Elaha Masoomi. "There were death threats."
Diba Masoomi said that Rona Mohammed married Shafi in Kabul, Afghanistan. When she could not have children, he took a second wife, a practice that is not uncommon in Afghani culture.
Shafi and his second wife had seven children.
Update: here's more from Phyllis Chesler, who's amazed that the police have called it like it is: an honor killing, even though I consider murder a more effective description (Hat tip: Jihad Watch).
1 comment:
This seems eerily similar to the tragic honor killing in the Dallas area last year. Back story, an American woman married an Egyptian man. They came here, had three children-a son and two daughters. The daughters attended Lewisville HS. He opposed them dating American boys and had bought a house and presumably arranged a marriage for his older daughter. The girls were fearful of him and the oldest girl had made plans to move out and live with her American boyfriend's family. Their "father" took them by his taxi and shot them on New Year's Eve. He some how got away, possibly with an assumed passport, and is thought to be living in Egypt. We have had other incidents including a bride burning where the husband was caught as he tried to take a plane back to Pakistan. These are colorful cultural traditions that no nation needs. And this is about extorting money from families and abusive power....
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