Agent 3 updates us on the murder trial of Afghan Muslim immigrant Peer Khairi, first reported on WWW in "The terrible trials of Muslims facing Western justice". The Crown's case, in an Islamic nutshell, is that Khairi murdered his wife in a fit of rage because she wasn't raising their daughters to be good Muslim girls. In particular the Crown alleges, he was angry that the wife supported the decision of their daughter, Giti, to marry a man of whom the father disapproved, thus bringing dishonour on the family.
Unfortunately for Her Majesty's counsel, Giti's verion of the events in their Toronto home four years ago didn't exactly follow the prosecution's outline. In her testimony yesterday, she told the court it was her mother, not her father, who wore the pants in the family. [Figuratively speaking, of course. Ed.]
Sure, her parents fought a lot, and no longer slept together, but it was all about money, or lack thereof, not about keeping their Muslim faith and old-country customs... and honour, of course. It was really all the fault of the Canadian government. The couple were on disability, you see -- both of them -- and those cheap Canucks weren't giving them enough "social assistance" to take care of the household expenses.
Walt wonders how, if both of them were disabled, they managed to immigrate. Aren't prospective immigrants supposed to pass some kind of medical examination? Or is that requirement waived for "refugees"?
Asked about her impending marriage, Giti told the crown attorney, “I talked to [my father] and everything was OK." But, she admitted, at first "he was a little bit concerned. Usually in our culture we get married to our cousins. He wanted me to get married to my cousin because if it’s a cousin, he’s trusted more."
So, if you were wondering what's wrong with Afghans, maybe that's the explanation, right there. Inbreeding. Kind of a Middle Eastern version of those weird folks in Deliverance.
The fighting got more intense, it seems, when Giti started spending weekends at her fiancé's home. "[My father] was a little bit concerned in the beginning," she testified. "He said, ‘I want to make sure he will not use you and leave you on the side of the road." But eventually he came around, she told the jury.
When Giti took the stand, she was wearing the hijab, the head-covering worn by all good Muslim girls. Did her father force her to wear that, she was asked. No, she said. Although she had refused to wear it while she lived with her parents, it was a decision she made on her own after her marriage to the guy who wasn't her cousin. "I never wore hijab," she said. "My parents never forced us to follow the religion. My parents never forced us to wear hijab. After I got married I started praying and God worked in my heart."
The Crown then asked if she discussed these religious issues with her father. Giti said she shared everything with her father, just as she did with her mother before she "passed away". The relationship was more or less the same. That's what widower's daughter said. Then she buried her face in her hands and began to sob.
Update: Court was adjourned on Thursday following Giti's breakdown. The jury was sent home and told they'd hear more from Giti the next day. Wrong! When court reconvened this morning, the daughter failed to appear. To spare her "further emotional upset", the crown and defence attornies agreed to read into the record her statement given at the preliminary hearing.
Then -- roughly a year after her mother was killed -- Giti painted a much different picture of an immigrant family of eight crammed into a cockroach-infested apartment in Toronto's west end. Read the gory details as recounted by the Toronto Star's Rosie DiManno in "Crown’s portrait of Khairi clan unraveled by slain woman’s daughter".
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