Jury selection starts today in a Kingston, Ontario court in the murder trial of a Montreal couple and their son, who are charged with killing three members of their own family. The girls' father, Mohammad Shafia, "believed his daughter had dishonoured him and the family by having a romance with a young Pakistani man in Montreal."
"The girls were not allowed to go out alone, for example, neither to the cinema nor to meet friends and they were not able to dress freely"
Also murdered along with the Zainab sisters was Rona Amir Mohammad, 50. Ms. Mohammad, who was said to be close to the girls even though they were not her children, was Mr. Shafia's first wife.
Canal drownings murder trial begins CBC
The quadruple murder trial of a Montreal couple and their son started with jury selection Tuesday morning, with more than 1,000 candidates summoned to appear at the Kingston, Ont., courthouse. Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yehya, and their son Hamid Mohammad Shafia, 20, are accused of killing the couple's three daughters and Mohammad Shafia's first wife.
The high-profile case made headlines on June 30, 2009, after the bodies of the three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahari, 17, and Geeti, 13, and that of Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found in a submerged car in the Rideau Canal near Kingston.
The car's front end was up against the lock wall as if the vehicle had plunged in backward.
Mohammad Shafia, whose family is originally from Afghanistan but lived in Montreal's St. Leonard neighbourhood, had reported his daughters missing to Kingston police that same day.
Shafia, his wife and son were charged with first-degree murder days later, with talk of a so-called honour killing.
The trial, set to begin Tuesday morning, is expected to be long and complicated.
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