Trio guilty of 'honour killings'
A Canadian court has convicted a husband and wife and their eldest son of murdering four relatives in so-called honour killings.
Mohammad Shafia, 58; his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42; killed three of their own daughters and another relative, aided by their eldest son Hamed Mohammad Shafia, 21.
The suspects have each been found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. First-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.
Prosecutors said the defendants allegedly killed the sisters because they dishonored the family by defying its disciplinarian rules on dress, dating, socializing and using the Internet.
Their bodies of the three were found on June 30, 2009, in a car submerged in a canal in Kingston, Ontario, where the family had stopped for the night on their way home to Montreal from Niagara Falls, Ontario.
The prosecution alleged it was a case of premeditated murder, staged to look like an accident after it was carried out. Prosecutors said the defendants drowned their victims elsewhere on the site, placed their bodies in the car and pushed it into the canal.
