Muslim wife endured abuse for fear she’d be killed, Honor Killing trial hears

Photos: Cancrime (hat tip Ken)

Honor killings sanctioned and prescribed in Islam, authentic Islam.

Shafia wife endured abuse for fear she’d be killed, trial hears CanCrime (hat tip Kevin)

Rona Amir Mohammad did not flee abuse by her husband Mohammad Shafia and his second wife because she feared her husband would kill her, jurors at Shafia’s murder trial were told. “She said if she leaves, her husband will kill her,” Fahima Vorgetts (inset) testified Tuesday. “She took it seriously because her husband told her he will kill her if she leaves.” Vorgetts, a U.S.-based volunteer with Women for Afghan Women, a human rights organization, said she began taking phone calls from the Montreal woman in the spring of 2008, after a referral through Vorgetts’ aunt.

Vorgetts also is a native of Afghanistan. She said Rona seemed desperate, and called her two to three times a week for roughly a year.

Rona, along with Shafia sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, were found dead in a submerged car in a canal in Kingston on June 30, 2009. Three weeks later Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, and their son Hamed, 20, were arrested and each charged with four counts of first-degree murder. They have pleaded not guilty.

Rona was Shafia’s first wife, whom he married in his native Afghanistan, before the family moved to Canada in 2007 and settled in Montreal. Prosecutors allege the victims died in an honour killing orchestrated by Shafia because he believed his daughters had shamed him and his first wife had become a source of constant friction in the household.

Vorgetts said Rona was not allowed to use the phone in the family’s St. Leonard house so she would go to a payphone in a nearby park in the evening and call. She said many calls were marked by long bouts of crying as Rona recounted constant abuse and humiliation.

“She did say that he beat her up, the husband beat her up … he was pulling her hair,” Vorgetts testified.  Rona also complained of being kicked by Shafia.

“She said that her husband and her husband’s wife were abusive towards her and she needs help, what to do, where to go,” Vorgetts told jurors. “She did not have any information, knowledge about what to do in this country.”

Vorgetts said she urged her to go to a shelter, a church or to police, but Rona told her she was too afraid to leave and was warned by Shafia that he’d make sure she was shipped back to Afghanistan if she went to authorities. Vorgetts testified that Shafia held all of Rona’s identity documents, including her passport, so Rona believed she could not flee to another country, where she had relatives.

“She said that her husband’s wife would mock her, put her down in front of the family’s guests,” she testified. Rona told Vorgetts that Yahya told Rona, “you are a slave, you are a servant.”

Though Yahya gave birth to all of the family’s children, Rona had helped to raise them, the trial has heard.

“She loved the girls, she loved the children and she said that it’s very difficult to leave the children,” Vorgetts testified.

 Defence lawyer Peter Kemp, who represents Shafia, asked Vorgetts why she didn’t call police in Montreal herself if she believed Rona’s life was in danger.

“I asked Rona to do it and that was her call,” Vorgetts replied. She could not offer any details of any injuries Rona might have suffered as a result of the abuse she claimed she endured.

Jurors already have heard that Rona asked Shafia for a divorce but he had refused to put anything on paper. An immigration lawyer who testified Tuesday said that if Shafia’s polygamy was revealed in Canada, the second marriage would have been considered invalid and Rona would have had legal rights to property and support.

Montreal lawyer Sabine Venturelli said if Shafia’s hidden polygamy had come to light, it would have had serious repercussions on the family.

“I think immigration [officials] would have withdrawan residential status of all members of the family,” testified Venturelli, who had handled an application by Rona for permanent resident status. Other family members already had status.

A sibling of Rona who traveled thousands of kilometres from France to appear at the trial concluded her testimony Tuesday with an animated soliloquy.

Diba Masoomi, who lives in France and was a younger sister of Rona, had testified Monday that Rona told her, in a phone call, that she overheard Shafia plotting to kill her and Zainab.

During questioning by defence lawyer Patrick McCann Tuesday, Masoomi insisted she was telling the truth. She said she would “swear on Qur’an” that she is being truthful and said she would be “in fire in hell” if she lied. She said she has suffered terribly.

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Comments

[Noliinsipientiuminiuriaspati.blogspot.com]

[begin cathartic rant/] completely ott, but I was annoyed with the DNC's official court jester, Jon Dhimmi Stewart, comparing the Muslim Brotherhood to, as he characterized it, "the equally scary sounding" YMCA in relation to the Egyptian elections. Hello, you muffin head, the YMCA doesn't have an official policy of burning down other people's houses of worship, kidnapping "infidels" then raping & killing them, you stupid jihadist apologist moron. Go ask Anwar Sadat's family what they think about the "progressive, liberal" brotherhood, you dhimmwitted doofus. [/end cathartic rant]

[Cynthia Eller]

I would like to watch these horrific men be drawn and quartered and their members hacked off bit by bit! A long excruciatingly painful ordeal to allow them to undergo the shame and abuse they heaped on their innocent wives and female children! This order should be carried out by WOMEN ONLY and they should torment them by shoving PIG BRAINS UP THEIR ASSES! I understand they take it in the ass so this should not be a surprise! Only the fact that it would be PORKY the PIG! Obunghole, the current White House impostor, seems to condone this behavior! I have NOT seen him react to any of the "CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY" his mushlimPIG brotherhood have committed! i am waiting for the day when he pays for his INACTION to serve OUR country! The worthless pzoshrt!

[Patti]

These women need to FIGHT BACK! I personally volunteer to show them how it's done!

[Jeffrey LeBow]

Isn't the testimony of any muslim suspect since lying is koranically authorized in order to protect or advance islam?

How do we ever know when a muslim is telling the truth. Western constructs known as oaths are just that, manmade constructs not found in the shariah and therefore harem. We can only trust a muslim to be a muslim and all that this entails.

Okay, Rona is a sympathetic victim in all of this, as were the 3 children who were murdered, if we are to believe Vorgetts' testimony. It's probably true since the husband's behavior certainly fits the established mode of muslim males.

But can we?

[Person of the Book]

One of the ways that you can know how civilized a society is is by the way they treat the weaker members, in this case, the women.

The way muslim women are continually abused by their owners (read: "husbands") says all you need to know.

On the other hand, no matter what the feminists say, women are treated better in the US than in any other place on earth.

[Jeffrey LeBow]

@Person of the Book,

". . .women are treated better in the US than in any other place on earth."

Unless you're an unborn female. Or a unborn male.

[make money online]

what an appaling act, hope justice is done.... but this is a culture problem, not an islamic one.

[Kufar Dawg]

@make money online

Your Al Taqiyya lies need a lot more work Ahmed. You might be able to play that lie to the MSM, but not here.

[maryanne]

I can't imagine have no one to go to and being subject to that. What will the canadian courts do to these people. This isn't the only woman sacrificed in canada, the muslims obviously know they can get away with this treatment of women. Who is next the U.S. I don't think so. However, having said this, the muslims keep our court systems busy trying to wear down our constitution. This needs to stop. If you loose in court, you should be hammered with costs. Maybe that is what is needed. If you don't like our laws, then leave.

[GCBC]

@make money online "what an appaling act, hope justice is done.... but this is a culture problem, not an islamic one."

Are you out of your mind? Honor killing is mandated by this misogynistic false religion. It is occasionally true that some other culture will succumb to this vile practice and the belief. The vast majority are committed by Muslim men and their families. Instead of restoring honor as it is supposed to do it only shows how deeply these families,especially the men how great their self loathing must be.

This is because they are sooo week that they have no self-control and therefore rape and murder their women and it's the woman's fault because the man has no control. If the women are allowed to live they must marry the rapist(great way to force a woman who doesn't want you into marriage.) Personally I think I might choose prison. It is such a hopeless and backward society and yet,feminists support the Muslim men who dress their women in life killing body bags for their own personal pleasure. If I had to wear one of those things, I'd let myself go ...big time!

Such cowardly thieves and bastardization of another faith in order to maintain control and enslave a people for as long as they continue to believe the nonsense. Muslims are imprisoned by their own faith. Ask a kaffir, they might know the way out of the darkness.

[Mary]

The dynamics of domestic violence have been studied in the U.S. for decades. What has been discovered is that a domestic violence abuser is immune to reason or equality in a domestic relationship. He sees his victim as merely an extension of himself, not a person with the right to ideas, feeling, and actions of her own but a possession to enhance him. The abuser isolates the victim and gradually punishes any indication of independence and forces the victim to cater to the arbitrary whims and needs and desires of the abuser. The abuser feels entitled to exert his will on the victim and to ridicule, abuse, torture, rape, even murder the victim but never takes responsibility for these actions, instead blaming the victim for such behavior and deflecting consequences to the victim. Despite laws to the contrary, society often aids and abets the abuser by also blaming the victim without protecting the victim from abuse. Most domestic violence victims are murdered by their abusers when they try to leave them, especially if they have no one to help them.

In Islam, women are seen, as Mohammad declared, as half as valuable as men and deficient in reason. In the Qur'an husbands are told to plow their fields [wives and those sex slaves they posses] as they see fit. Husbands are also told to punish and beat their wives merely on the "fear of disobedience," so wives are expected to obey their husband's every whim or be punished and/or beaten. That does not leave much room for independent thoughts or actions. Women are also made responsible for any sexual crimes committed against them, which can include such things as talking to a man or standing too close to a man or simply that her husband is jealous of her, and can be stoned to death on the mere allegation of impropriety. Such punishment comes with the accuser, anyone he might happen to have to support his assertion, and the imam who pronounces sentence, and the woman is not allowed to speak on her own behalf because it is considered improper (too tempting to men) for women to speak about sexual things in public. These are Islamic principles enforced socially by Sharia law, and the veils women wear are an indication that they take, willingly or not, responsibility for the lust of men. This responsibility goes beyond being "modest" and she can be covered from head to toes with only her eyes showing and still be punished for having seductive/attractive eyes. Women who try to leave their Muslim husbands can be killed for apostasy or for appearing improper being without their husband's permission.

Sharia law enforcement of Islam codifies domestic abuse of women. Islam appeals to domestic violence abusers as it gives them impunity for their crimes against women. Islam also conditions women to take responsibility for their own abuse. Islam enforced by Sharia law is an inhuman system with no respect for God-given reasoning powers bestowed on human men and women and even forbids reasonable analysis of itself. Islam is simply a domestic violence abuser's dream.

[Guy Macher]

Mike Tyson's Double; Christians and Jews in the Mid-east do not commit honour killing. This is about Islam. Not the regional culture.