In his own defence…

AS the trial moved into its second full month, defence lawyer Peter Kemp rose on the morning of December 8 and called his client to testify. Mohammad Shafia stood up in the prisoners' box and calmly made his way to the witness stand. He tested the interpreters' headset and then swore an oath on the Koran to tell the truth before Justice Robert Maranger and the jury.

This was a significant development, considering that on November 3, the court learned that Shafia had been taken to hospital the previous night with an unspecified "serious" medical condition. At that point, the trial went into limbo until November 8 when Shafia returned to his regular seat in the prisoners' docket, wearing his usual checked sport jacket and looking none the worse for wear.

Now, a month later, he was relaxed and clearly prepared to talk. Under questioning by Kemp, through the usual series of interpretations, Shafia related his early life in Kabul, his rise to success as an electronics businessman, and the family's many moves to escape persecution and find a better life. He talked about how he met both his wives, Rona and Tooba, and came to marry them.

Kemp's strategy soon became clear. He was asking Shafia the difficult questions up front, or at least working around the fringes of the more damning evidence heard and seen so far.

Was he a devout Muslim? "I am a Muslim, normal, like other Muslims," he answered.

The Koran prevents Muslims from murdering or killing anyone? Yes.

Births and deaths are predetermined by God? "It is God who determines the date of someone's death," said Shafia. "No one else."

Kemp asked him about the importance of religion in marriage. "Mr. Kemp," he replied, "this depends on the girl. If she wants someone to be out of my religion, I will ask my daughter and tell her this is not good. If she insists on this, this is not good — but this is her life."

Shafia also insisted he never had any issues with any of his daughters' clothing or makeup. The father and daughter clashed over Ammar, her Pakistani boyfriend. He said he approached Zainab, advising her to continue with her education instead of marrying him. Zainab told him she would consider it.

"I did what a father will do," he testified.

After the marriage broke down, Shafia said Zainab called him in Dubai. "We had greetings and she said, Daddy, I want to offer my apologies to you that I didn't listen to what you told me," he recounted. "I said, 'I have already forgiven you.'"

Shafia began crying on the witness stand, recalling how Zainab came to his room after he returned from Dubai to apologize to him once more. "I gave her a hundred dollars and I kissed her face. I didn't say anything else to her," he said.

Shafia also insisted that there was never any plan to leave Rona in Europe after the family came to Canada. "My conscience and our conscience never allowed this."

Why, then, did he lie and tell immigration authorities she was a cousin? "Because the lawyer told me, and I knew that [also], two wives will not be accepted."

He insisted Rona was always welcome to eat at the table with the family and that she did so. "I never hit Rona but I swore at her," he said.

Then he talked about the photographs of Zainab and Sahar that provoked him to swear and curse them on the police wiretaps.

Shafia claimed he never saw the provocative pictures of his daughters until around the time of their funerals when his sons were cleaning the bedrooms for guests to stay. Only then did he learn about Sahar's boyfriend Ricardo.

"I was not happy with seeing this picture. I didn't think of my children this way. I never expected my children [would do] this thing. My children did a lot of cruelty toward me," he said. "I'm not sure if the mom knew about this. They hid this from me. I swore because I did not expect this thing from my children."

Shafia was asked to explain why he would exhort the devil to shit on the graves of his dead daughters. "Yes, I heard it in the court," he replied. "To me it means the devil will go out and check their graves."?When he called the girls filthy, he said, "I was actually cursing myself. I was swearing at myself."

Then Shafia offered interesting takes on the conversations he had with Fazil Javid and Latif Hyderi. He said he never tried to engage Fazil in a plot to kill Zainab because "the minute he said it was Fazil, I hung up on him. Not even two seconds. I turned if off."

He was suspicious of the uncle's call. "Latif was the one who cancelled this marriage [to Ammar Wahid] and basically forced my daughter to withdraw," he charged.

Kemp reminded Shafia that he sounded "quite angry" in the wiretaps. He admitted that he was upset because "Zainab, she didn't accept my words, and Sahar, because I saw those pictures."

Shafia then insisted that both cars and all 10 people went to the Kingston East Motel the night of the deaths and that Zainab came and asked Tooba for the keys to the Nissan.

"She gave the key. Rona was behind her," he said.

Most importantly, perhaps, he said he never realized where the four had died until he and Tooba and Hamed went there with police on July 18, 2009. "I didn't know this area Kingston Mills by its name."

It was also during this day of examination that Shafia insisted he was travelling alone to Montreal on July 27 when, nearing Kingston, he got a phone call to return to Niagara Falls.

When it was her turn to question him, Crown attorney Laurie Lacelle wanted Shafia to explain his treatment of Rona, suggesting his first wife had become Tooba's servant.

"I beg you, dear respected lady," said Shafia, "she was a member of my family. In all my life I spent more money for her than for Tooba." Shafia insisted Rona was referred to as his cousin only for immigration purposes. He said the children had never been told to hide the true relationship. "The children knew her as their aunt," he said.

As for the wiretaps, Lacelle highlighted the difference between how Shafia spoke of his daughters and how he talked to Hamed when, as the two of them sat in a police cruiser under arrest, Shafia said to his son: "I commend you to God."

"You never said that to your daughters, did you?" Lacelle pointed out. "You said, may the devil shit on their graves."

Shafia said he found the photos of the girls in underwear and with boyfriends upsetting. "I was not happy with this. They hid this from me," he said. "The pictures when she was in the laps of boys. I saw these pictures. They were bad pictures."

Again, echoing the expert testimony of Shahrzad Mojab, Shafia placed the blame for Zainab's troubles squarely on his daughter's actions. "She destroyed her life because she didn't listen to our advice," he said matter-of-factly.

Lacelle's cross-examination went into a second day. She grilled Shafia about the trip to Niagara Falls and why Hamed's cellphone was recorded being used off the Westbrook Road tower west of Kingston right in the middle of the vacation. Hamed was never without his cellphone, so police believed he participated in a scouting mission that took the pair to Kingston Mills.

"On the 27th it was me alone," Shafia now acknowledged. During interrogation, Shafia had been silent on the matter. "Hamed was not with me," he stated.

Lacelle wanted to know why the family started out so late from Niagara Falls on June 29 to return to Montreal. Checkout from the first room was 11:06 am but they didn't leave the second room until 6:46 pm, "even though everyone was ready to go. You decided to start a seven- or eight-hour trip at night?"

"That was the decision everyone made," Shafia responded.

"I suggest you started that trip late at night because you wanted those kids to be asleep when you got to Kingston," Lacelle countered.

"When you are tired you can go to sleep," Shafia said. "[It] wasn't the intention for the children to go to sleep."

Lacelle moved on to the scene in Kingston, Shafia insisting that when he and Hamed went to find a motel that Tooba was sitting with the car just a short distance up Highway 15.

Lacelle accused Mohammad, Tooba, and Hamed of killing the women.

"We never gave permission to ourselves," he said. "All of our children came to the hotel. We never allowed ourselves to do this … The mom would be the first to complain. How is it possible someone would do that to their children?"

"You might do that if you thought they were whores," Lacelle said.

He only considered Zainab and Sahar to be that way, Shafia answered, after seeing the suggestive photographs after their deaths. "The two others, they were innocent and one was just a child."

Shafia also dismissed the wiretaps, even what sounded like concern for the possibility that cameras might have recorded their actions at Kingston Mills. "I wish there was a camera," he told Lacelle. "We have no worry about the camera. Whatever evidence could be found about my children I would be happy about that … I wish there was a camera so we would not be in this trouble."

When Shafia was recorded saying the girls "messed up," he said it was directed at Zainab's taking the car for a joyride. "This is a bad thing she did," he said, "take the car key without permission."

Despite Shafia, Tooba, and Hamed's having told police on several occasions that Zainab was prone to taking the car keys and driving the Nissan, Shafia had this to say: "If we knew they will do such a thing and take the key and drive, if I knew that, I would have prevented that action." Yet Tooba allegedly turned over the keys to her untrustworthy daughter without hesitation.

Lacelle had a theory why Shafia was vehement that he would repeat his actions even if they hoisted him onto the gallows. "You chose to kill them," she said.

Shafia replied that murdering his daughters and first wife would not do anything to restore honour. "For me, anyone who kills a child or daughter, that person really becomes shameless," Shafia reasoned. "I don't call that honour."

The defence lawyers finished their re-examinations of Shafia around noon on Friday, December 9. They told the court that on Monday they would call two of the surviving Shafia children to testify. As it turned out, only one of them, the son, would be called to the stand.