Family jailed in Belgium for 'honour killing'

A Belgian court has sentenced four members of a Pakistani family to prison for the "honour killing" of their law student daughter and sister, Belgian media reported.

After pronouncing the family members guilty for the shooting death of Sadia Sheikh in October 2007, the jury on Monday sentenced father Tarik Mahmood Sheikh to 25 years behind bars, mother Zahida Parveen Sariya to 20 years, brother Mudusar to 15 and sister Sariya to five years.

Lawyers for the family said brother Mudusar, who confessed to pulling the trigger on the three bullets that killed his sister, was handed a lesser jail term than his parents as they were considered to have ordered the girl's death.

Prosecutors had asked for a life sentence for all three, and between 20 and 30 years behind bars for Sariya.

Sadia Sheikh, who defied the family by living with a Belgian and refusing an arranged marriage, was shot dead when aged 20 on October 22, 2007.

Mudusar admitted before the jury of five women and seven men to killing his sister while saying the rest of the family were not to blame.

Her parents and sister stood accused of aiding and abetting the killing which took place when the student visited her family in the hopes of patching up their quarrel.

Premeditated crime

Questioned during Belgium's first "honour killing" trial, Mudusar said the killing was premeditated "for a long time".

The trial also involved rights groups pleading for gender equality as part of a civil suit at the hearings.

Sadia Sheikh left the family home to study after her shopkeeper parents tried to arrange a marriage with a cousin living in Pakistan whom she had never met.

Before moving in with a Belgian man named Jean, she was helped by fellow students and teachers and also spent some time in a centre for victims of domestic violence, where she drew up a will as she felt threatened.

She had nonetheless agreed to visit the family in hopes of making peace the day she was shot.

The father, mother and sister, who also face charges of "attempting to arrange a marriage", denied involvement in the murder, saying Mudusar killed his sister in a fit of rage.

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Pakistani wife in disputed marriage gunned down in court by her brother

 A new low for Pakistan:(

So-called honour killings by families who believe their daughters have disgraced them are increasingly common in Pakistan. But the gunning down last week of a woman by her brother, a lawyer, in front of dozens of witnesses in a packed courtroom in the bustling city of Hyderabad marks an alarming new low.

The family of 22 year-old Raheela Sehto had already made their fury at her marriage to Zulfiqar Sehto – a love match struck without their permission – abundantly clear. They reacted by filing a claim with local police that their daughter had been kidnapped by her 30-year-old husband, a life-long neighbour who had wooed Raheela over the years, although largely through clandestine mobile phone conversations.

Her uncle had tried to throttle her with a scarf at an earlier appearance at the high court in Hyderabad in July. The couple had petitioned the court for its protection and to try and have the kidnapping charges thrown out.

But Sehto, a university graduate working for the local electricity company, said they felt they had no reason to fear for their lives in court, even when in the earlier part of the morning he was sitting almost directly in front of his wife's eventual killer, Javed Iqbal Shaikh, her brother.

Shortly after the two judges had returned to their seats after a break, Shaikh, dressed in the black suit and tie of his profession, produced a gun he had smuggled into court, lunged at Raheela and shot her point-blank in the left side of the head.

"Before she fell to the ground, my wife was looking straight at me," said Sehto. The gunman, Shaikh, then tried to shoot Sehto, but was overpowered by police.

Although furious families have succeeded in killing their daughters in police custody before, it is the first time such an incident has occurred in open court.

The killer managed to evade security checks, including two sets of metal detectors and body searches, because he was one of the country's obstreperous lawyers – an entitled group that has been known to assault policemen violently.

"The lawyers, they don't like to be searched," said Amjad Shaikh, a police superintendent in Hyderabad, the main city in Pakistan's southern province of Sindh. "Security is a little bit of a problem there."

Apparently unrepentant, Shaikh gave interviews to journalists later, while in custody, saying he had "lost my mind".

"I did that in rage because she had dishonoured the family," he said to a Pakistani newspaper. Four other family members who accompanied him in court have also been charged over the killing.

"Everyone is very shocked by this because it happened in an educated family," said the police officer. "Normally, honour killings happen in the rural areas where people are not educated."

In the countryside such crimes can even be given the imprimatur of local "jirgas", informal and illegal justice systems run by communities that enforce tribal law.

The superintendent added that the involvement of the Shaikhs was also unusual, saying they are known for being "peaceful".

The Shaikhs of Sindh, originally migrants from neighbouring Punjab, tend to enjoy high levels of education, are traditionally involved in trade and are little connected with tribal custom.

According to the latest survey of violence against women by the Aurat Foundation, a rights group, there were 2,341 honour killings in 2011 in Pakistan – a 27% jump on the year before. The report also said there were more than 8,000 abductions and 3,461 rapes and gang rapes.

But the figures were just "the tip of the iceberg", it warned, saying researchers relied on those cases that were reported in the media only.

Amar Sindhu, a professor of philosophy at Sindh University and a women's rights activist, said the phenomenon was less to do with "cultural and social practices" and more to do with "the complete absence of the rule of law".

"Even in the 19th-century, the colonial authorities were able to reduce these crimes by enforcing laws when social, cultural and religious practices were just as male dominated and anti-woman as they are today," she said.

Sehto struggled to speak as he described the loss of his young wife, whom he had known for almost his entire life, growing up in the small town of Behlani.

"She was my neighbour and we went to each other's home since we were children," he said. "We began to fall in love more than 18 months ago, but they kept refusing my family's request to marry her."

Raheela agreed to elope with Sehto only after her father attempted to marry her off to a Shaikh from Punjab whom she did not know, he said.

His family has now left Behlani, and he said he will never return.

"All I want is justice, I want the court to convict Javed and his accomplices with the death penalty," he said.

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Palestinians protest murder of battered wife

The brutal killing of a battered wife in front of horrified witnesses in an open-air Bethlehem market has prompted angry accusations that Palestinian police and courts ignore violence against women.

Nancy Zaboun, a 27-year-old mother of three, had her throat slashed on Monday after seeking a divorce from her abusive husband of 10 years.

On Wednesday, several dozen women staged a memorial for Zaboun in the Bethlehem market alley where she was killed, holding signs and chanting, "No to violence against women." One sign read, "Shame on us Palestinians for killing our women."

The husband was arrested at the scene and is the prime suspect, West Bank officials said.

The case reverberated across Palestinian society because of the brutality of the attack.

However, violence against women continues to be overlooked, as in other parts of the Arab world, and women's rights activists say abusive husbands are rarely punished.

Zaboun was regularly beaten by her husband, 32-year-old Shadi Abedallah, at times so severely that she had to be hospitalised, said Khaula al-Azraq, who runs a West Bank counselling centre where Zaboun sought help.

Even so, Abedallah was never arrested. Police only made him sign pledges he would stop hitting his wife, said Azraq, adding that Abedallah himself is a former police officer.

'Family honour'

Zaboun was killed after attending a hearing in her divorce case. She was walking on the steep paths of an open-air market, not far from the Church of the Nativity, marking the traditional birthplace of Jesus, when she was fatally slashed.

Women have scored some breakthroughs in traditional Palestinian society in recent years, including gaining a greater role in public life.

However, tribal laws still remain strong, and violence against women is generally viewed by police as an internal family matter.

Azraq said violence against women appears to be on the rise because of a deteriorating economic situation and because abusers do not fear punishment.

Last year, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed a decree that ended a long-standing practice of treating killings within a family with leniency.

Justice Minister Ali Mohanna said such killings are now treated as any other slaying, and claims of assailants that they were protecting "family honour" are no longer taken into account.

Zaboun's husband could face life in prison if convicted, the minister said.

'Slaughtered like a sheep'

Thirteen women were killed by family members or in suspicious circumstances blamed on relatives in 2011, said Farid al-Attrash of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights.

In 2012, 12 women were killed by relatives, including three in "family honour" cases, he said. Those include suspected adultery and similar cases.

Zaboun was married at age 17, and the couple have three children, aged eight, six and three. Azraq said the beatings began immediately after the wedding.

Abdel Fattah Hemayel, the district governor of Bethlehem, said the authorities stepped in at some point, attempting to solve what he described as a family dispute.

He confirmed that the husband was asked to sign pledges to stop beating his wife.

Rabiha Diab, the women's affairs minister in the Palestinian self-rule government, said the killing of Zaboun, and the failure to prevent, it were troubling.

"Every once in a while, there is a case that makes us feel worried and afraid that we are going back to square one [as women]," she said, noting that law enforcement agencies need to look at what they can do to protect women.

She called for harsh punishment of Zaboun's killer. "We should set an example because... he slaughtered her like a sheep," she said.

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Nazir Afzal: 'We tackled grooming gangs. Now we have to confront forced marriage among Travellers'

The pioneering prosecutor behind the Rochdale abuse case tells Jonathan Brown that communities' problems can't be ignored
 

Until recently, many of the crimes encountered by Nazir Afzal rarely troubled a British courtroom. The perpetrators went unpunished and the women and children who were the victims of abuse were disbelieved. But the mood has changed. Since the conviction of nine men for raping and trafficking white teenagers in Rochdale earlier this month, the issues raised by the case and by Britain's most senior Asian prosecutor have risen to the very top of the policy agenda.

Now the time has come when no minority communities should be allowed to offer refuge to men who commit crimes against women, he says. Mr Afzal, who has become the public face of the legal system's determination to stamp out honour-based violence, forced marriage and grooming, admits there are areas where there is still work to do. He cites the Traveller community, where children are still married off against their will.

In an interview with The Independent the Chief Crown Prosecutor for the North-west says he is determined to name and shame groups who refuse to acknowledge the existence of exploitation within their midst. "I understand this sensitivity that certain people have but I don't have it. There is no community where we should not be ensuring the victims are safe," he said.

As a first generation British-Pakistani he admits that some groups he works with can often feel more comfortable in his presence than someone they might consider an outsider. "There are some communities where we have feared to tread, and by 'we' I mean every agency. I am hopeful that no longer exists. It no longer exists as far as I'm concerned, and the last bastion for me is the Traveller community, he said.

Public shock surrounding the Rochdale case is beginning to have a "cathartic effect" on the people of the former mill town, he says. But as the taboo is confronted in the South Asian communities, others are only just being challenged. "I have become aware of massive issues of forced marriage in the Traveller community. It is widespread," he said.

Mr Afzal was appointed head of the Crown Prosecution Service in the North-west last year. His first decision was to reopen the Rochdale case after a series of mistakes and poor decisions by police, social workers and his department nearly led to the gang evading justice.

Turning the spotlight on the Traveller community is a typically bold action by Mr Afzal. He is currently assisting representatives of the community who are working to raise awareness of forced marriage and women's rights, advising them on government strategy. In the meantime he has had to deal with problems closer to home. In the North-west half a dozen exploitation cases have focused attention on Asian immigrant groups.

But while the public debate has centred on the ethnic background of offenders, he insists no nationalities or social groupings are entirely blameless. "Every community will have its violence every community will have its child abuse, every community will have the attitudes and poor treatment of women," said Mr Afzal.

The issue, he believes, is one of male control rather than culture. "The vast majority of paedophiles and child abusers in this country are white British – 95 per cent," he said. "The one thing these men have in common with the vast majority, with virtually all paedophiles, is that they are men. We have got to focus on what the real issue is.

"This is a gender issue. It is about men and their attitudes to women: men thinking they can control women in any way they want. Men determining what is feminine, what is womanly ... that somehow they can be manipulated and controlled," he added.

Since leaving London and taking over his position in Manchester it has been a spectacularly busy time. Soon after moving from his post as CPS director in West London, he found himself required to rule on a spate of killings by householders defending their property against intruders. The subject immediately found itself on the Government's radar, with interventions from the Prime Minister.

In all cases Mr Afzal chose not to prosecute. "Those decisions were easy to make," he says. "The line is: don't be a vigilante. But by all means protect yourself, protect your family, protect your property, but don't go out there looking for offenders," he added.

In August, Manchester and Salford saw violent looting and 300 arrests. The cities pioneered the use of night courts and community impact assessments, bringing the first successful prosecutions. Yet despite the severity of some of the punishments meted out – such as a 16-month jail term handed down to a drunk who stole a box of doughnuts from a looted bakers – he believes the judges acted proportionately.

"In the context of the disorder we had in August of last year it was absolutely right that deterrent sentences were handed out," he said.

Later he ruled that charges should be dropped against the nurse Rebecca Leighton in connection with alleged poisonings at Stepping Hill hospital in Stockport, a case that was described by the Greater Manchester Police chief Peter Fahy as "like murder on the Orient Express with 700 suspects".

Then on Boxing Day the shooting of the Indian postgraduate student Anuj Bidve as he and a group of friends made their way to the sales in Manchester city centre prompted international concern over the safety of Britain as a destination for overseas students.

It was a highly sensitive case which sparked an uncharacteristic reaction from Mr Afzal, a father of four. "He came here to make the most of the opportunities we have in this country.

"I met his parents when they were over here and it's very rare for me to cry, but I did cry in their presence. They sent their eldest son over here to study and they were coming to collect his body and that to my mind is extremely tragic," he recalls. It is possible that the Bidves' plight stirred emotions linked to his own immigrant experience.

A man accused of killing the young student is due to go on trial next month.

The Afzal family originate from Pakistan's lawless North-west frontier around 30 miles form where Osama bin Laden was shot dead.

They served the British Army as caterers – a family link he shares with President Barack Obama – moving around British India to Cyprus before settling in inner city Birmingham. There Mr Afzal grew up among a close-knit Pakistani community but one that was at the sharp end of 1970s racism and urban decline.

"I was bullied at school," he recalls. "On many occasions I remember coming home with bits of my clothing torn and hiding it from my parents because there a real sense of pride – that you don't want them to know."

Meanwhile, his father and brothers moved with the army to Northern Ireland. In 1974 a cousin was loaded into the back of a van by the IRA and shot dead for the "crime" of serving squaddies tea and biscuits in the mess. A younger cousin witnessed the shooting. "He was told: 'This is a message to all of you – get out.' My father decided to stay for another 15 years – that was his response," said Mr Afzal.

Back in Birmingham Mr Afzal's mother was busy challenging community assumptions about women. "If she became aware that a 16 -year-old girl from down the street was being married off early she would walk down there in her early 80s or late 70s and say, 'What the hell are you doing? Don't you realise she is allowed to have an education. Give her a choice.'"

Mr Afzal's response to the bullies was to study and later stand up for victims, although he concedes that by the time he intervenes it is already too late.

"Criminal justice response is almost like a failure. Whatever it is that has happened shouldn't have happened in the first place. This is about prevention; this is about changing attitudes.

"Part of our role is in prosecution because we send out very strong messages through robust and strong prosecutions, fully supporting victims through the process. The sentencing sends out a message of deterrence," he said.

"People talk about miscarriages of justice when people who are not guilty go to prison. Thankfully that is rare. To my mind the greatest miscarriages of justice are those who are perpetrators who are not brought to justice. There are many, many more of those."

Tough talk: the prosecutor on...

... the Traveller community

"There are some communities where we have feared to tread, and by 'we' I mean every agency. I am hopeful that no longer exists. The last bastion for me is the Traveller community."

... the murder of Anuj Bidve

Mr Afzal said the Indian student killied in Salford on Boxing Day had come to Britain "to make the most of the opportunities in this country".

"I met his parents when they were over here," he said. "It is very rare for me to cry, but I did cry in their presence. They sent their eldest son over here to study and they were coming to collect his body, and that to my mind is extremely tragic."

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Is this Britain's first white honour killing victim? The happy but headstrong girl, 17, whose love across the racial divide had a tragic end

Laura Wilson was just 17 years old — a happy but headstrong girl whose love story across the racial divide would have a tragic ending.
‘She was feisty — if she had anything to say she would speak out,’ her mother Margaret says, as she showed me a picture of a smiling, mischievous teenager.
Laura’s Asian boyfriend, Ashtiaq Ashgar, also 17, was born in Britain but when Laura challenged his family’s traditional cultural values by confronting them with details of their relationship, she had to be silenced.
One night in October 2010, Laura was lured to the banks of a canal in Rotherham in South Yorkshire, where Ashtiaq attacked her before throwing her into the water.
He was subsequently arrested and found guilty of Laura’s murder last June and sentenced to 17 years in prison.
So does this mean that Laura was the first white victim of an honour killing in Britain?

Margaret Wilson has never spoken publicly before, but she told me she is convinced her daughter was murdered because she challenged the code of honour which some ethnic communities still follow in the UK.
‘I honestly think it was an honour killing for putting shame on the family. They needed to shut Laura up and they did,’ she says.
In today’s multi-cultural Britain, the majority of young people from immigrant communities are well-integrated. Yet in many households, old traditions are still a powerful force.
In south Asian and Middle Eastern communities, controlling the behaviour of women is seen as key to the family’s honour.

Refusing to consent to marry the husband chosen for you or leaving an abusive marriage is often seen as dishonouring the family.
As I found when investigating the issue of ‘honour killings’ for BBC1’s Panorama, women are suffering in silence.
Behind closed doors, beatings, kidnap, forced imprisonment, rape and even murder are being committed in the name of honour.
The Government admits it does not know the true scale of the abuse. The latest survey of police statistics show that 2,823 honour crimes were reported in 2010.
But a quarter of police forces could not provide the figures and many crimes go unreported, meaning that the real tally is much higher.

Laura Wilson’s murder had the brutal hallmarks of an honour killing.
She lived in Ferham Park, an Asian and white community in Rotherham.
Although only a teenager, Laura already had a baby by an Asian man, Ishaq ‘Zac’ Hussein, a 20-year-old.
However, he refused to recognise the child and Laura was really in love with his friend, Ashtiaq Ashgar.

Her mother says: ‘Ashtiaq was her first love, she adored him.’
But stung by Zac’s rejection of her and their child, Laura decided to confront the men’s families and told them she’d had sexual relations with both men.
Sheffield police believe this was the trigger for a plan to kill Laura.
Detective Superintendent Mick Mason told me that Laura’s decision to go round to the families and to confront them was not welcomed in the Pakistani community.
He says: ‘An argument broke out — one of the mothers tried to hit Laura with a shoe.
Police know from analysing records of the two men’s phones that after the heated exchange they held several meetings. There were even text messages about buying a gun.

DS Mason, now retired, took me through the desolate industrial area where Laura took her last walk after Ashtiaq texted her three days after she confronted the families. He had asked her to meet him by the canal.
Police believe Ashtiaq began a frenzied knife attack on the girl before throwing her, badly wounded, into the canal.
‘I have seen many murders in my time,’ said DS Mason, ‘but this was the worst.’
The two men were arrested and tried for her murder. The pathologist in court revealed that Laura had been stabbed in the top of the head repeatedly as she tried to struggle out of the water.

Ashtiaq was found guilty and sentenced to 17 years in prison and Zac was acquitted.
‘I think it was all about shame,’ DS Mason told me. ‘In their eyes, Laura had brought shame on the family by coming round. Their son had also brought shame on the family.’
As Laura’s mother lays flowers on her daughter’s grave, she cannot forget the face of the accused in court: ‘He never showed remorse.’
Laura’s tragic case is made unusual by the colour of her skin — but her experiences are mirrored by those of young south Asian women who fall foul of their families’ sense of honour.

The suicide rate among women of south Asian descent is three times the national average as many women take what they see as the only way out of abusive family situations — by killing themselves.
Jasvinder Sanghera, a British-born Sikh, took me round the streets of Derby, where she was brought up and where her parents tried to force her to marry a man she had never met.

She was only 14 at the time but she was imprisoned in her room and when she ran away she was disowned by her family.
‘Girls are taught from a young age that cutting your hair, wearing make-up and having a boyfriend are all dishonourable acts,’ she says. ‘You understand that if you engage in this behaviour, you put yourself at risk. It can be a trigger for a forced marriage or even murder.’
Following her experience, Jasvinder decided to campaign against honour crime and set up Karma Nirvana, which runs the UK’s helpline for victims. Calls have doubled in the last four years.
‘The 500 calls we receive every month are just a drop in ocean,’ says Jasvinder.
‘There are hundreds of thousands of women out there we have yet to reach.’
At the helpline centre I met Neina, a British-Asian volunteer who was a victim of honour crime.
She was beaten by her husband and her own father and mother took his side, blaming her and refusing to help her. Neina fled to a refuge and her family cut all ties with her.
Nationally, the police response to honour crime has been patchy and serious mistakes have been made because of a failure to understand the risks women and girls face.
Detective Chief Inspector Caroline Goode, of the Metropolitan Police, is involved in training other officers about honour crimes.
She says: ‘Every single one of these cases involve extreme violence because the murders are committed to send a message to the wider community.
'Often there is a high degree of organisation often precipitated by a family meeting.’
DCI Goode spent four years investigating and bringing to justice four men, all relatives, who were involved in the case of Banaz Mahmoud, a 19-year-old Kurdish girl who was murdered at her family home in South London in 2006.
DCI Goode pursued two of the suspects to Iraq and they were extradited back to Britain and tried in court. Banaz’s fate was sealed when she was spotted kissing her boyfriend outside Morden Tube Station in South London.
She had been allowed by her family to leave her violent husband but when she started seeing someone else, it was too much for their honour.


Her father first tried to kill her after her murder had been sanctioned at a meeting of the extended family. That attempt was unsuccessful and Banaz ended up in hospital.
DCI Goode said Banaz recounted her terrible ordeal to the police.
She said: ‘The officer simply did not understand or believe what she was being told and had no knowledge of honour-based violence.

The detective showed me a letter Banaz wrote and sent to the police in which she named the relatives she believed were out to kill her. But Banaz was terrified and refused to press charges. With no where else to turn to she went home.
Less than a month later, Banaz was killed on the floor of her own living room in the most shocking and violent way involving rape and strangulation.
Two of her relatives were arrested and taken into custody where they were secretly recorded boasting that they had hidden her body more than 100 miles away.
‘Banaz’s body was buried six feet under a house,’ DCI Goode.

‘They had gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure we did not find her.’
A ccording to Nazir Afzal, of the Crown Prosecution Service and who is the lead prosecutor on honour crime, there are between ten and 12 honour killings a year in Britain.
‘But we don’t know the true figure, how many unmarked graves there are,’ Mr Afzal admitted.
He described a conversation he had recently had with a 20-year-old man.
‘He told me that in his society, a man is like a piece of gold, a woman is like a piece of silk. If you drop gold in the mud, you can clean it. But a piece of silk is ruined.’
At the national helpline for honour crime victims, many of the calls involve Asian girls afraid of being forced into marriage.
I listened as staff tried to arrange protection for a frightened 15-year-old taken out of school by her parents and beaten after they found a text on her mobile they believed was from a boy. She was terrified she was about to be taken to Pakistan and married off.
The Coalition government is now considering making forced marriage a criminal offence on the basis that many experts say it is the root cause of honour crime.
Many believe that the key to preventing honour abuse in the long term lies in education.
Yet Jasvinder Sanghera approached more than 100 schools before finding one that was prepared to let her talk to pupils about forced marriage and honour-based abuse.
She says: ‘The schools all say the same old thing — we don’t want to offend communities.’


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Canadian jury finds Afghan family guilty of 'honour killings'

A jury in Canada has found three members of an Afghan family guilty of drowning three teenage sisters and another woman in what the judge described as "cold-blooded, shameful murders" resulting from a "twisted concept of honour". The verdicts concludes a case that shocked Canadians.

Prosecutors said the defendants killed the three teenage sisters because they felt they had dishonoured the family by defying its strict rules on dress, dating, socialising and using the internet.

The jury took 15 hours to convict Muhammad Shafia, 58; his wife Tooba Yahya, 42; and their son Hamed, 21. They were each found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder, which carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

After the verdict was read the three defendants again declared their innocence in the killings of sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar 17, and Geeti, 13, as well as Rona Amir Muhammad, 52, Shafia's first wife in a polygamous marriage.

Their bodies were found 30 June 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.

The Ontario superior court judge Robert Maranger said the evidence clearly supported the conviction.

"It is difficult to conceive of a more heinous, more despicable, more honourless crime," Maranger said. "The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your completely twisted concept of honour ... that has absolutely no place in any civilised society."

In a statement following the verdict, the Canadian justice minister, Rob Nicholson, called honour killing "barbaric and unacceptable in Canada".

Defence lawyers said the deaths were accidental. They said the Nissan car accidentally plunged into the canal after the eldest daughter, Zainab, took it for a joy ride with her sisters and her father's first wife. Hamed said he watched the accident, although he didn't call police from the scene.

After the jury returned the verdicts, Muhammad Shafia, speaking through a translator, said: "We are not criminal, we are not murderer, we didn't commit the murder and this is unjust."

His weeping wife, Tooba, also declared the verdict unjust, saying, "I am not a murderer, and I am a mother, a mother."

Their son, Hamed, speaking in English said: "I did not drown my sisters anywhere."

Hamed's lawyer, Patrick McCann, said he was disappointed with the verdict. His client would appeal and he believed the other two would as well.

The prosecutor, Gerard Laarhuis, said: "This jury found that four strong, vivacious and freedom-loving women were murdered by their own family in the most troubling of circumstances.

"This verdict sends a very clear message about our Canadian values and the core principles in a free and democratic society that all Canadians enjoy and even visitors to Canada enjoy," he said to cheers of approval from onlookers outside the court.

The family had left Afghanistan in 1992 and lived in Pakistan, Australia and Dubai before settling in Canada in 2007. Shafia, a wealthy businessman, married Yahya because his first wife could not have children.

Shafia's first wife was living with him and his second wife. The polygamous relationship, if revealed, could have resulted in their deportation.

The prosecution painted a picture of a household controlled by a domineering Shafia, with Hamed keeping his sisters in line and doling out discipline when his father was away on frequent business trips to Dubai.

The months leading up to the deaths were not happy ones in the Shafia household, according to evidence presented at trial. Zainab, the oldest daughter, was forbidden to attend school for a year because she had a young Pakistani-Canadian boyfriend, and she fled to a shelter, terrified of her father.

The prosecution said her parents found condoms in Sahar's room as well as photos of her wearing short skirts and hugging her Christian boyfriend, a relationship she had kept secret. Geeti was skipping school, failing classes, being sent home for wearing revealing clothes and stealing, while declaring to authority figures that she wanted to be placed in foster care, according to the prosecution.

Shafia's first wife wrote in a diary that her husband beat her and "made life a torture", while his second wife called her a servant.

The prosecution presented wire taps and mobile phone records from the Shafia family in court to support their honour killing allegation. The wiretaps captured Shafia spewing vitriol about his dead daughters, calling them treacherous and whores and invoking the devil to defecate on their graves.

"There can be no betrayal, no treachery, no violation more than this," Shafia said on one recording. "Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows ... nothing is more dear to me than my honour."

Defence lawyers argued that at no point in the intercepts did the accused say they drowned the victims.

Shafia's lawyer, Peter Kemp, said after the verdicts that he believed the comments his client made on the wiretaps may have weighed more heavily on the jury's minds than the physical evidence in the case.

"He wasn't convicted for what he did," Kemp said. "He was convicted for what he said."
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'Honour' crimes against women in UK rising rapidly, figures show

Banaz Mahmod, an 'honour killing' victim strangled in 2006

The number of women and girls in the UK suffering violence and intimidation at the hands of their families or communities is increasing rapidly, according to figures revealing the nationwide scale of "honour" abuse for the first time.

Statistics obtained under the Freedom of Information Act about such violence – which can include threats, abduction, acid attacks, beatings, forced marriage, mutilation and murder – show that in the 12 police force areas for which comparable data was available, reports went up by 47% in just a year.

The figures, shared with the Guardian by the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation (Ikwro), also reveal that a small number of forces – including four in Scotland – are still not collecting data on how often such violence occurs.

The 39 police forces that gave Ikwro figures recorded 2,823 incidents in 2010. Ikwro estimates that another 500 crimes in which police were involved were committed in the 13 force areas that did not provide data.

But this is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg, campaigners say, as so many incidents go unreported because of victims' fears of recriminations.

Jasvinder Sanghera of victim support group Karma Nirvana said the real figure could be four times as high.

Among the 12 forces that gave figures for 2009 and 2010, the number of incidents rose from 938 to 1,381. In London, reported incidents rose from 235 to 495; in Greater Manchester, from 105 to 189.

Ikwro's campaigns officer, Fionnuala Ni Mhurchu, said the increase was probably due partly to better police awareness and to more victims coming forward after coverage of high-profile prosecutions, but that violence itself was also increasing as young people increasingly refused to bow to their families' demands.

"They're resisting abuses of their human rights such as forced marriage more and more," she said. "And as a result they're being subjected to this kind of violence. We hear from the community that this violence is on the increase.

"These figures are important because they demonstrate this is not a minor problem – it is a serious issue affecting thousands of people a year, many of whom will suffer high levels of abuse before they seek help. We want the government to develop a national strategy on honour-based violence that covers not just policing but also issues such as education and community cohesion."

This is the first time UK figures have been collated for so-called honour-based violence, defined as crimes planned and carried out by a family or community in order to defend their perceived "honour".

Previously a figure of 12 "honour killings" a year has been cited, although it is unclear where the number comes from.

In 2006 Banaz Mahmod, a 20-year-old Kurd, was strangled on the orders of her father and uncle because they disapproved of her boyfriend. She had repeatedly told police her family were trying to kill her. The case led the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) to publish a new strategy in 2008, which highlighted the need to gauge the scale of the problem to improve police work and recommended that all English and Welsh forces introduce a mechanism to record the number of reports. There is no national guidance in Scotland.

Ikwro said it was concerned that some forces were still not collecting the data in a consistent format, and called on Acpo and Acpo Scotland to help ensure this was done, and release statistics regularly.

Sanghera said complete data was crucial to prove the scale of the problem, adding that she feared momentum had been lost in recent years.

Commander Mak Chishty of Acpo insisted this was not the case, adding that the police national database, which is being phased in, would provide collated figures.

"We have reviewed every force with a questionnaire and the 2008 strategy has been completed," he said. "We're now in consultation on a new strategy. All frontline staff have received awareness training and every force has a champion on honour-based abuse. I'm confident that any victim who comes to us will receive the help they need."

Maya's story

When I was 16 my mum came into my room one day and said I had to get married to my cousin in Pakistan. I was horrified: I wanted to go to college and get a job, and I didn't even know him, how could I marry him? But when I said no, my mum slapped me across the face.

After that I wasn't allowed out. My family treated me with disgust, as if I had shamed them. My father, mother, even my young brother, beat me on a daily basis. My body was covered in bruises.

I wasn't given any food for days on end, and I tried to take an overdose on several occasions. I just used to sit on my bed from morning to night. Prison would have been a better place.

After around a month, they let me go out to the doctor. Terrified, I sat in the toilet and called a solicitors' firm. I've not seen my family since that day. A wonderful solicitor got me a place at a refuge and a forced marriage protection order.

But I'm still constantly paranoid: I'm always looking over my shoulder. I've lost everything. And I'm scared of what will happen if they find me.

Maya's name has been changed

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