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Shafia jury begins 2nd full day of deliberations
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CBC News-
A jury in Kingston, Ont., has begin its second full day of deliberations to decide the fate of three Montrealers accused of killing four family members.
Jurors have so far spent 10½ hours reviewing the case against Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Yahya and their son Hamed, who pleaded not guilty to four counts each of first-degree murder.
They're accused of killing Hamed's three sisters and their father's childless first wife in a polygamous marriage.
The bodies of Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti Shafia, 13, along with Rona Mohammad Amir, 50, were found dead in the family’s Nissan, submerged in the Rideau Canal on June 30, 2009.
On Saturday, the seven women and five men on the jury gathered in a special room at the courthouse until around 8 p.m. to consider the case. They only emerged a few times for breaks and to have lunch and dinner, but they did not have any questions for the judge.
The girls’ parents and eldest brother were arrested 21 days after the deaths and charged with four counts of first-degree murder. In reporting the deaths, they had told police the car ended up in the water by accident.
The family had been on route to Montreal, returning home from a family vacation in Niagara Falls, when the women died.
The accused maintained the four family members who died went into the canal after eldest daughter and unlicensed driver Zainab took her sisters and Amir on a joyride when the family stopped for the night in Kingston.
During the nearly three-month-long trial, the Crown maintained the family road trip was part of a plot to kill the four because they had tainted the family’s honour. The Crown alleged the family's patriarch was upset that his two eldest daughters wanted boyfriends, betraying his traditional Afghan values.
The Shafias moved to Canada in 2007. They fled their native Afghanistan more than 15 years earlier and had lived in Dubai and Australia before moving the family to Montreal and applied for citizenship. At the time of the deaths, they were all permanent residents, except for Amir who had only a visitors’ visa.
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