Mom accused in alleged honour killings breaks down, denies all

It was the first time the Crown gave a detailed account of how it believes a Montreal couple and their son plotted and killed four female family members in Kingston in 2009.

And it was the first time the mother of the three dead teen girls got emotional on the stand, denying it all.

Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42, spent a fifth straight day yesterday testifying in her own defence, most of the time being cross-examined.

Yahya, her husband Mohammad Shafia, 58, and their son Hamed, 21, are accused of first degree murder in the deaths of the couple's three teen daughters, Zainab,19, Sahar,17, and Geeti,13, and Shafia's other wife, Rona, 52.

The bodies of the four were found in a car submerged in the Rideau Canal in Kingston in June 2009.

The defence contends it was an accident while the crown is alleging it was an honour killing, sparked by rage over the girls' secret boyfriends and increasingly westernized ways.

The crown prosecutor went step by step in detailing its theory of the alleged murder conspiracy, including how the trio drove two family cars to the Kingston Mills Locks, and used the bigger, heavier Lexus to push the smaller Nissan into the canal.

The prosecutor alleges they chose that spot so that the car would fall straight down into and under the water; that the accused bought a smaller, second hand car because the family cars were too big to fall into the canal on their own; and that they had to use the Lexus to nudge the Nissan over when it got stuck.

Yahya vehemently denied each step. 

At one point, she was on the verge of tears, her voice trembling, saying, "No, we are not murderers. We are a sincere and collected family."

"I am a mother,(...) then you know what the heart of a mother is for a child," Yahya testified.

"Don't tell me I killed my children."

The crown accused her of lying to police to protect her son and co-accused Hamed. He said that she thought he'd be put through cold water torture in jail, akin to what she knew of Afghani prison procedures. He told her that she tried to save him from that cold water torture, and asked why she didn't try to save her daughters from the cold water of the canal.

That's whenYahya broke down, heaving in tears, saying it wasn't true.

"Someone tell a mom you will put a child under water, what kind of a mother would that be?" she sobbed.

Yahya resumes her testimony Monday, with the crown continuing its cross examination.