anury 10, 2012
A mother’s fierce instinct to protect her son drove Tooba Yahya to tell whopping lies that, in turn, made mother, son and father even more compelling prime suspects in a quadruple murder..
Not exactly what she’d intended.
Not making much sense either. But there was no bouncing ball of logic to help jurors, journalists and ordinary spectators follow the testimony that spilled out of Tooba in torrents of disconnected monologue Tuesday morning, second day on the stand here in her own defence.
“I saw, with my own eyes, they handcuffed Hamed and took him away,” she said of that morning — July 22, 2009 — when the threesome were arrested in Montreal as they were driving to consult with a lawyer.
In the car with a female police officer afterwards: “She talked a lot and a lot. You did this. You and your husband and your son, you did it.
“They told me they would put Hamed in a cold place, with only water and torture him. I was thinking, what should I do, what should I do? I have to release Hamed from that torture and cold water.”
So, unfathomably, out of the water and onto the Kinston Mills Locks.
It was Tooba, matriarch of the Afghan clan — three daughters now dead, three other children removed from the family home by youth welfare authorities, one son a co-accused on four charges of first-degree murder — who, critically, put herself, husband Mohammad Shafia and their so dear boy, Hamed, at the Locks on the night of June 30.
That’s what she admitted to an RCMP investigator during that prolonged July interrogation, the only nugget of severely incriminating evidence that officer could pull out of her: Walking in the dark across the grass with Hamed, hearing a splash, realizing the Nissan in which her daughters and her husband’s first wife had been passengers, had plunged into the canal, and then fainting.
Neither of the other suspects had made such an admission about being at the Locks in those wee hours of June 30, 2009, when the vehicle went into the water — surely some kind of accident, the defendants have steadfastly maintained; a diabolically plotted “honour killing” staged to look like an accident, argues the prosecution.
The three Shafias — Tooba, Mohammad, Hamed — at the Locks some time after midnight is a scenario Tooba recanted within a day of offering it. But the jury has seen and heard the videotape in which she makes the statement. It hangs over all the accused at trial — although with profoundly incriminating wiretap conversations and extensive forensic evidence.
Illogically, Tooba now claims to have made it up in order to draw suspicion away from Hamed so that he would be released, especially as the RCMP investigator also made reference to another son’s statement, the 15-year-old who’s name is protected by a publication ban.
“The fear was getting into. He was mentioning — too. If I was able, I would give up my life to get (Hamed) away from that spot. So I said this thing, to get Hamed out of that position…”
Unless the Crown manages to elicit some sense out of Tooba when they get their kick at the witness — that hadn’t happened by the lunch break Tuesday — court is left with this weird contention: Tooba dropping Hamed, Shafia, all of them, in the soup in an allegedly falsified account to get Hamed out of jail.
How placing the threesome at the Locks that night would help accomplish this is not remotely clear.
As Tooba said on the stand, of events from the point the trio were arrested in Montreal and she was subsequently driven back to Kingston: “From that moment, I didn’t understand anything. I had no comprehension.”
Tooba’s three oldest daughters — Zainab, Sahar, Geeti — were found drowned in the Nissan, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, first wife to Mohammad Shafia, thus co-wife to Tooba in their clandestinely polygamous marriage. The clan of 10 had been returning to Montreal from a vacation in Niagara Falls, in a two-vehicle convoy, when stopping in the Kingston area to take rooms overnight.
That’s what the defendants say, claiming to have no idea how the Nissan ended up in the canal — apart from the fact that Zainab routinely drove the car without permission and without a license. Tooba said Zainab came into her motel asking for the Nissan key to retrieve some articles and that’s the last anyone saw of the 19-year-old.
“There was a knock on the door. Zainab came and told me, mother, can you give me keys to the car because there’s something in the trunk I want it.
“That’s it. After that…I don’t know anything till the morning.”
Parents and Hamed would present themselves at a police station the following morning to report the Nissan missing and the women vanished.
The three were put in separate rooms and interviewed by police officers who had quickly suspected that there was foul play involved in how the Nissan had come to be submerged in the canal, the drowning victims not wearing seatbelts and one window wide open, yet nobody apparently making any attempt to escape.
Shortly after their arrival and separation, an officer told Tooba that they’d found the Nissan, sunk in the water, with one victim inside.
Her brain has been all fuzzy ever since, Tooba told court.
“There were many things I don’t remember. On June 30, I lost three of my family and Rona, half of my family.
“But there are things I remember now.”
Most urgently, Tooba remembers what she forgot to tell investigators back then — about Hamed getting a call from one of his father’s business associates in Montreal, telling him about a used car auction that he should attend. (Among his other business ventures, Shafia re-sold used cars overseas.)
“They needed a computer for that reason,” explained Tooba, providing an answer to another riddle: Why Hamed, as court has heard, drove to Montreal right after the family had just checked into the Kingston East Motel — driving the Lexus the Crown alleges was damaged when used to bump the Nissan into the canal, staging a single-vehicle accident in a Montreal parking lot to cover that damage and returning to Kingston in the morning, this time driving another family vehicle, their Pontiac minivan.
An explanation or an alibi — what less could a mother do for a son?
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