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'Honor killings' in Canada: 5 responses to the Shafia verdict

Here are five opinions and editorials published in Canadian news outlets after the guilty verdict, which carried a sentence of life in prison with no parole for 25 years.

5. The jury got it wrong

  • By Whitney Eulich Staff Writer

Opinion Editorial by Jonathan Kay, comment page editor, in the National Post

 “No doubt, there are nuances of the case that will be lost on anyone except a juror or other courtroom eyewitness. But based on what I do know, I think the jury made the wrong decision in regard to at least one of the defendants: In particular, I simply can’t see how there was no 'reasonable doubt' about the involvement of Tooba Yahya, the mother.

Even the case against father Mohammad Shafia seems less than airtight.... I never saw any proof that he actively conspired with his son in the murder plot.... He is clearly a thoroughly loathsome human specimen who no one in the free world should miss. My gut sense is that this, as opposed to any specific evidence of his culpability, is the main reason he was convicted of murder.

That isn’t how our justice system is supposed to work. Even the most horrible people are supposed to be allowed to walk free if the state can’t definitively prove that they committed a specific crime.

One counterargument … is that the Shafia killings were 'honour killings,' which, by definition, are always a family affair. I’m sorry, but I don’t buy this. Yes, this was indeed an 'honour killing.' But even so, our Western system of criminal justice is based on the concept of individual guilt. And you cannot short-circuit the need to prove an individual defendant’s direct personal complicity by throwing the term 'honour killing' against a clan, and then hoping to get an up-or-down verdict on the whole lot of them at once.

Hamed Shafia killed his sisters and his step-mother. Of that much, I am quite sure. But from where I stand, his mother and father should have been acquitted.”

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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