Toronto: For the past three weeks, Canadian police have been trying to get to the bottom of a bizarre case in which four women relatives died when a car was found submerged in the picturesque Rideau Canal between Toronto and Montreal.
Yesterday, police answered those questions finally, laying first-degree murder charges against Mohammad Shafi, an electronics dealer from Kabul who lived in Dubai between 1992 and 2007.
Gulf News has learned that Shafi along with his second wife, Tooba Mohammad Yhaya, and their 18-year-old son, Hamid, were arrested leaving for Dubai through Pierre Trudeau airport in Montreal.
The mystery for investigators began on the morning of June 30 just outside Kingston, a small Ontario city halfway between Montreal and Toronto.
The Rideau Canal, engineered by British troops in the mid 19th Century, was built to link Ottawa with Lake Ontario. Now the waterway is only used by pleasure craft, climbing though a series of picturesque locks beginning at Kingston Mills.
As the first vessels waited for the locks to fill at 8.30 a.m., a Parks Canada employee noticed a plume of petrol and oil floating on the water. Closer inspection showed a submerged Nissan Sentra, front-end up, against the wall of the canal.
A police dive team found four women inside. They were later identified as sisters Zainab Shafi (19), Sahar Shafi (17), Geeti Shafi, (13) and Rona Amir Mohammad (50) of St-Leonard, Quebec.
But police were baffled. The only way into the lock was through a narrow opening, barely large enough for the Nissan Sentra to squeeze through; there were no signs of braking or swerving, little signs of the vehicle being driven over the grassy area, no signs of speed, and car seemed to enter the water in reverse.
Some eight hours before the Parks Canada worker noticed the oil plume, the Nissan Sentra, along with a Lexus SUV had pulled into a local Kingston motel for the night.
Mohammad Shafi, a successful electronics dealer from Montreal, had brought his large family of two wives and seven children to Niagara Falls for a visit. The two vehicles were returning to Montreal, stopping at Kingston for an overnight rest.
Shafi had married his first wife, Rona Amid Mohammad in Kabul in 1979, but the couple had no children. He later married Tooba, and the growing family moved to Dubai in 1992, in part to escape the turmoil sweeping Afghanistan.
For 15 years, Shafi thrived in the electronics retail business in Dubai and Tooba provided him with seven children; three sons and four daughters. Two years ago, the family moved to Montreal, living in a $1,500 (Dh5,502) per month apartment in the St. Leonard suburb. But while the children referred to Rona as an aunt, if anyone outside the family asked, she was a cousin.
Shafi told police in subsequent interviews that after checking into the motel for the night, Zainab visited his room at 1.30 a.m. to ask for the keys to the Sentra to get some clothes. When he and his wife woke up at 7.30 a.m., the car was gone, and so too were three of his daughters and his first wife. He said he tried to contact them by mobile phone but was unable to do so. He assumed they had gone ahead to Montreal.
Just in case, at lunchtime, he filed a missing persons report with the local Kingston police.
He also told police that his three daughters had a habit of taking the car without his permission. None of the women found in the car were licensed to drive by Quebec authorities.
A team of 13 police investigators combed through hours of video tape trying to establish just how the Sentra ended up in the river. Autopsy results on the causes of death were not released.
For the past three weeks, the surviving Shafis appeared on Canadian television and frequently gave interviews, showing photographs of a smiling family and happy times.
Emerging reports, however, over the same time, began to paint a different picture. Relatives in France claimed Mohammad Shafi had declined requests from Rona for a divorce. And Zainab had reportedly began a torrid love affair. There was talk of marriage, she had shunned her father's authority and was, according to some press reports, beaten by her father and two brothers.
On Wednesday evening, police in Montreal, assisted by Kingston officers, arrested the father, his wife and their eldest son. All three have been subsequently charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
At a police press conference in Kingston on Thursday, Police Chief Steve Tanner hinted strongly that the killings of the four women were committed as a matter of family honour.
"All shared the rights within our great country to live without fear, to enjoy safety and freedom ... and yet had their lives cut short by members of their own family," the chief said.
According to Rona's sister, Diba Masoomi, the motive behind the killings was indeed honour.
"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," she wrote in an email to Kingston police. "She was really afraid," Masoomi said. "There were death threats."
Timeline of a crime- June 30, 2009 1 a.m: Seven members of the Shafi family arrive at a Kingston, Ontario, motel driving two vehicles, a black 2004 Nissan Sentra and a silver Lexus SUV
- 1:30 a.m. : Zainab Shafi, 19, enters her parents' motel room and asks for the keys to the Sentra: she needs to get clothes out of the car.
- 7:30 a.m. : Mohammad Shafi and his wife, Tooba Mohammed wake up and discover the Sentra missing. Also missing are Zainab, sisters Sahar, 17, Geeti 13, and Rona Amir Mohammad, 50. The four can't be reached by mobile phone.
- 8:30 a.m.: The first pleasure craft enter the Rideau Canal locks at Kingston Mills. The site is operated by Parks Canada. Staff notice a plume of oil and petrol on the water, then see a submerged car. A police dive teams recovers the bodies of four females later in the afternoon.
- 12:30 p.m.: Mohammad and Tooba file a missing-person's report with Kingston police before driving home to Montreal
- July 2: Autopsies are carried out on the four victims, but police remain tight-lipped about the causes of the deaths.
- July 3: Kingston police survey the area around the locks tyre tracks are not conclusive and there are few signs of the Sentra actually driving through the area. There are not brake marks at the scene.
- July 5: The four victims are buried in an Islamic cemetery in Laval, in suburban Montreal.
- July 22: Montreal Police arrest Mohammad and Tooba, along with their 18-year-old son, Hamid, en route to Dubai at Montreal's Pierre Trudeau International Airport.
- July 23: Charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder, all three are remanded on bail when they appeared in a Kingston court.
