Omar Khadr: into the unknown

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, October 4, 2012 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Janet Hamlin/Pool/Reuters

In the spring of 2004, when Omar Khadr was a still a teenager, a Foreign Affairs bureaucrat flew to Guantánamo Bay for a jailhouse meeting. An internal government memo—secret at the time, but now part of Khadr lore—famously described what the Canadian visitor found: a “thoroughly screwed-up young man” who had been “abused” by every adult in his life, from his radical parents to fellow detainees. “Before he is returned to Canada (if this were to be a possibility) some thought should be given to managing this process,” the memo continued. “The social service agencies should play a major role.”

Khadr, of course, was still years away from coming home. Shot and captured on an Afghan battlefield, and shipped to Cuba shortly after his 16th birthday, he grew from boy to man behind the world’s most infamous bars. Along the way, he learned to survive and endure, not just the incessant interrogations, but the manipulation of older, more sinister cellmates. As Khadr told one psychiatrist in 2010, just four months before pleading guilty to war crimes: “I grew up a little bit more and I became more independent in my thoughts. Right now, nobody can influence me to do anything.”

As desperate as he was to escape Guantánamo, Khadr became accustomed to the rhythms and the routine, as prisoners so often do. Popular with the jailed and jailers alike, he spent much of his incarceration in a communal lock-up, sharing meals and prayers and games of soccer with other detainees. He watched television. He played basketball. After a decade inside the wire, Khadr understood how to navigate the strange world of Gitmo—and how to get things, from acne cream to “special comfort socks” to more juices and salads in his lunch. He saw a doctor three separate times just for his dandruff.

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Omar Khadr is on his way home

By Michael Friscolanti - Saturday, September 29, 2012 at 8:37 AM - 0 Comments

Omar Khadr—a boy, now man, whose legal saga has triggered fierce debate among fellow Canadians—has spent his final night behind U.S. bars.

Early this morning, the Toronto-born 26-year-old was escorted onto a U.S. military plane, bound for an unspecified Canadian jail.

Khadr was eligible to apply for a prison transfer last year, but bureaucratic delays on both sides of the border had held up the process.

What happens next is not clear.

Khadr, who pleaded guilty to five war crimes, including the battlefield murder of an American soldier in Afghanistan, has six more years left to serve on his sentence. But under Canadian law, he will be eligible to apply for parole in June.

Source: The Miami Herald

The secret Omar Khadr file

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, September 27, 2012 at 9:15 AM - 0 Comments

Colin Perkel/CP

Omar Khadr has spent so much of his young life answering questions. (Some honestly, some not.) The faces of his interrogators have changed over the years—men, women, American, Canadian—but the questions rarely did. The gist of every grilling was the same. How does a 15-year-old kid from Toronto end up on the front lines of Afghanistan? What was your father’s relationship with Osama bin Laden? Did you throw the grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer? (As one CSIS spy famously told him: “You didn’t just fall off the turnip truck . . . You could probably tell us a lot of interesting things.”)

On June 15, 2010, the man asking the questions was not a nameless interrogator. It was Michael Welner, a prominent forensic psychiatrist based in New York. Hired by Pentagon prosecutors, Welner’s job was, among other things, to personally assess Khadr in advance of his much-anticipated war crimes trial. When they sat down together that Tuesday morning, inside the razor wire of Guantánamo Bay, Khadr was a few months shy of his 24th birthday. With a full beard and a muscular frame, he looked nothing like the bony teenager who was shot and captured by U.S. troops eight years before.

“If I had to ask you about the five worst memories that you have in your life, what are they?” Welner asked him.

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Susumu ‘Sumi’ Yoda

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, September 13, 2012 at 10:00 PM - 0 Comments

Team Macho

Susumu Yoda was born near Tokyo on Nov. 26, 1947, two years after U.S. atomic bombs annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He had two siblings—a sister and a brother—and like millions of other children, they grew up in a country shattered by the Second World War. Starvation was rampant.

Yoda was four years old when Allied forces ended their occupation of Japan, ushering in a new era of democracy and economic reform. His dad, lucky enough to find work, bought Yoda a gift he never forgot: a new camera. (The first Polaroid was introduced in 1947, the year he was born.) Yoda carried that camera everywhere, capturing countless photos of the world around him.

As a young man, Yoda shuffled between jobs, mostly in the construction industry. He also trained as a chef, learning the art of fine Japanese cuisine. But the work hours in his home country were gruelling—he later told one friend, “They don’t give you any time to yourself.” He longed for something more satisfying. After his father died of cancer, Yoda made up his mind and packed his bags. He arrived in Nova Scotia in 1978.

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Was Omar Khadr sexually abused?

By Michael Friscolanti - Friday, August 31, 2012 at 6:27 PM - 0 Comments

Michelle Shephard/Toronto Star/Getstock

Sexual abuse is the unspoken topic looming over the Khadr case. Click here to read the full text of newly released psychiatric reports that delve into the question.  

The story of Omar Khadr—or at least some version of it—has been told and retold so many times that even he has trouble keeping track of the details. As Khadr confided to one psychologist, he sometimes gets “mixed up with what I remember and with what other people tell me.” At last count, his young, twisted life has filled three books, half a dozen documentaries and thousands of news reports from across the globe. Even poets have mused about Canada’s most chronicled prisoner.

There are, of course, two competing narratives in the Khadr lexicon: the one he pleaded guilty to, and the one he didn’t. Khadr the aspiring Muslim martyr who proudly killed an American special forces medic. Or Khadr the helpless 15-year-old, thrust into battle by his al-Qaeda father, only to be shot, captured, and shipped to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. By now, most fellow Canadians are firmly convinced, one way or the other. Enemy combatant. Abandoned citizen.

What happens next is up to Vic Toews, Canada’s public safety minister. In exchange for that guilty plea (to five war crimes, including murder) Khadr received an eight-year sentence and the chance to request a transfer to a Canadian prison after serving just 12 more months at Gitmo. But almost two years later, Stephen Harper’s government is still pondering Khadr’s homecoming, and last month the feds prolonged the process yet again by asking the Pentagon to hand over two lengthy videotapes of Khadr being questioned by mental health professionals. As Toews explained, the raw footage will help corrections officials “appropriately administer” the rest of Khadr’s incarceration.

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WWE keeps on rolling—in cash

By Michael Friscolanti - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 at 10:46 AM - 0 Comments

J.B. Forbes/AP Photo

Back when Hulk Hogan was the WWF champion—leg-dropping Nikolai Volkoff and body-slamming André the Giant—children everywhere ate their vitamins and said their prayers. Hulkamania was as much a part of the 1980s as Cyndi Lauper and leg warmers. Even now, approaching his 60th birthday, Hogan and his “24-inch pythons” are synonymous with professional wrestling. (Quick, name the current belt-holder.)

But when it comes to making money, the Hogan era is no match for today’s men in tights. As improbable as it sounds, the WWE (as the federation is now called) has never been more successful.

Despite the emergence of mixed martial arts—with real violence and real victories—the scripted soap opera of pile drivers and Royal Rumbles is not only surviving, but thriving. The latest installment of Wrestlemania (No. 28) drew a record pay-per-view audience of 1.2 million. The WWE’s signature show, Monday Night Raw, recently celebrated its 1,000th episode. And earlier this month, during a conference call with analysts, CEO Vince McMahon said the publicly traded company is on the cusp of launching its very own cable network, à la Oprah. “I hope next quarter I will be making an announcement,” he said.

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Exclusive: Police investigate bizarre break-in at Russell Williams’s cottage

By Michael Friscolanti - Saturday, August 18, 2012 at 8:13 AM - 0 Comments

Pawel Dwulit/CP

• Review all Maclean’s stories tagged ‘Russell Williams’

Russell Williams’s infamous cottage is once again a crime scene. Only this time, the ex-colonel is the victim.

Maclean’s has learned that police in Tweed, Ont., are investigating a Williams-style break-in at the serial killer’s own lakefront bungalow, which has sat deserted since his shocking arrest 2½ years ago. The robbery occurred in late July, when someone pried open a living-room window and climbed inside. Among the stolen items was Williams’s beloved fishing boat, still parked in his garage after all this time.

For police, the burglary itself is only half the mystery.

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Newsmakers: Aug. 9-16, 2012

By Nicholas Köhler, Brian Bethune, Michael Friscolanti, Patricia Treble, and Mika Rekai - Thursday, August 16, 2012 at 3:02 PM - 0 Comments

Balazs Mohai/EPA

It’s Peaches season

Toronto-born electro-pop artist Peaches became the latest voice in the growing chorus of support for Pussy Riot, the Russian feminist punk-band-turned-cause-célèbre that faces up to seven years in prison for performing a song in a Russian Orthodox Church that protested Vladimir Putin’s government. Fellow Canadian Martha Wainwright has also been a vocal supporter, as have Björk and Sting. But Peaches, who is based in Berlin, has chimed in, in her own inimitable way. She is shooting a video featuring more than 400 artists and activists to be released on Facebook ahead of the Aug. 17 verdict. It’s called—what else?—Free Pussy Riot.

To write it, you must live it

Stephen Marche probably didn’t expect to evoke quite the level of contempt he did with “The contempt of women,” his column in September’s Esquire. The 36-year-old Canadian writer surveys a few cultural straws in the wind: some meaningful, like the economic rise of women, some ephemeral, like the “pitiable and grotesque” men of the hit TV show Girls, and concludes, “Feminine contempt [for men] is suddenly everywhere.” Certainly it is for him. “Calamitously awful,” “the worst thing you will read all day,” and an “epically impenetrable panic-flop” are just a few of the online retorts. Marche certainly offers, in the grand masculine tradition of the Charge of the Light Brigade, a suicidally target-rich environment for critics. Declining reports of rape in some (unspecified) parts of the U.S., he asserts, means that sexual equality has been achieved there. His tweeted response to his critics: “Women who show their contempt for my piece on the contempt of women prove my point by virtue of their contempt.”

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Jacob Moxie Whitney

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, July 26, 2012 at 10:20 PM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Team Macho

Jacob Moxie Whitney was a Mother’s Day baby, born May 10, 1992, in Brockville, Ont. For his parents, Monica Mroz and Randall Whitney, Jacob was the second of four children (after Alexander, but before Courtland and Stuart). He was, without question, the most rambunctious. “I don’t know if there is a better way to put it: Jacob was a challenge,” his mom says, smiling at the description. “He was on the go from the moment he was born.”

He learned to ride a bike when he was barely three—skipping training wheels altogether. When he was a little older, Jacob liked to climb out the attic window and walk along the roof. Or leap off the shed. “He was well known for trying out daredevil things, like riding his bike off the end of a picnic table,” says his uncle, Paul Whitney. “He was the kid where we all said: ‘Just keep an eye on him.’ ”

Jacob was 12, with dreams of becoming a police officer, when a throbbing pain attacked his right ankle. At first, it appeared to be a typical sprain—the result of yet another dive off the shed. But something was clearly wrong; his ankle was so unbearably cold that he used a hair dryer to try to warm it up. When his nose started squirting blood, Jacob was rushed to the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, in Ottawa. (Before losing consciousness, he made sure to ask the medics to turn on the siren.)

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Octogenarian battles JTF 2 over farm

By Michael Friscolanti - Monday, June 18, 2012 at 5:00 PM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Colin O'Connor

The verdict was never really in doubt; if the government wants to buy your land, selling is the only real option. But for Frank Meyers and his family, the official confirmation was no less devastating: their beloved farm, more than two centuries old, will indeed be transformed into a top-secret training ground for JTF 2, the Canadian military’s elite special forces squad.

“I am of the opinion that the properties proposed for expropriation are absolutely essential for the safety and security of Canada,” reads the final decision from Ottawa, signed by Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose. “For that reason and in absence of valid justification to do otherwise, I have confirmed my intention to expropriate.”

The paperwork, obtained by Maclean’s, marks the end of a long, public battle that pitted a piece of Canadian history against modern-day national security. The direct descendant of Capt. John Walden Meyers—a Loyalist war hero and the founder of Belleville, Ont.—Frank Meyers has spent seven decades farming the very same plot of land that King George III bestowed on his famous forefather as gratitude for his service during the American Revolution. (Ironically enough, Capt. Meyers was the 18th-century version of a special-forces commando, most famous for leading a late-night raid on the home of an American general. Patriot children actually believed he was the bogeyman. If you don’t behave, their mothers would say, Capt. Meyers “will come and eat you.”)

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Maclean’s exclusive: Russell Williams offers a defence

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, June 14, 2012 at 4:45 AM - 0 Comments

Review all Maclean’s stories tagged ‘Russell Williams’

On the morning he was sentenced to life in prison, serial predator Russell Williams stood up in court and spoke to his victims. Tears in his eyes, his voice barely a whisper, the ex-colonel said he was “indescribably ashamed” of his “despicable crimes”–two murders, two sexual assaults, and dozens of perverse home invasions–and that he truly understood the depths of the “profound, desperate pain” he inflicted. “There are those who will find it impossible to accept,” he continued, Kleenex in hand. “But the fact is, I very deeply regret what I have done and the harm that I know I have caused.”

Nearly two years later, at the same Belleville, Ont., courthouse, Williams has delivered another message to one of those victims: I should not have to pay for that pain.

Laurie Massicotte–who was ambushed in her living-room, stripped naked with a knife, and ordered to pose for Williams’s camera–is one of numerous plaintiffs now suing the disgraced former commander of CFB Trenton. (The family of Jessica Lloyd, who was raped and strangled inside Williams’s cottage, and another sexual assault victim who can only be identified as Jane Doe, have also filed civil lawsuits). In her claim, which seeks $7 million in damages, Massicotte says the events of that “horrific” night have left her mentally scarred, suicidal, dependent on alcohol, and “unable to properly and normally function within society.”

But in a stunning statement of defence–the first to be filed in any of the lawsuits–Williams “denies”  Massicotte is “entitled to the relief claimed” and puts her “to the strict proof thereof.” Although he does admit he “assaulted” her in the early morning hours of Sept. 30, 2009, he insists he “has no knowledge” of most of her detailed allegations, including the fact she feared for her life, suffered “humiliation and indignity,” and now requires “extensive therapy and medical attention.”

“The Defendant, Williams, submits that [Massicotte’s] action should be dismissed with costs,” concludes the two-page statement of defence, obtained by Maclean’s. In other words, Williams not only wants a judge to toss the case out of court, but to order his victim to pay his legal bills on the lawsuit.

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In Burlington, a bird-brained lawsuit

By Michael Friscolanti - Tuesday, May 22, 2012 at 4:39 PM - 0 Comments

Barry Gray/The Hamilton Spectator

Nestled along the sandy shores of Lake Ontario, Burlington’s Beachway Park is a summer hot spot for sunbathers and swimmers and Frisbee chuckers. With a scenic waterfront trail that stretches for two kilometres (and a “Snack Shack” that’s open till dusk), it is easy to forget that the entire beach is lined with gigantic hydro towers. As the city’s website says, the park is “a bit of paradise.”

Except, of course, for all the dead birds.

For decades now, visitors have been stepping over the feathered corpses—slashed and bloodied after colliding with those hydro lines and plummeting to the earth. In one especially grim week, a park regular counted 35 cormorant carcasses lying in the sand. So what happened to Doreen Walker, back in the summer of 2007, was perhaps inevitable: while sitting in a beach chair, immersed in a book, one of the doomed birds plunked on the top of her head. Terrified, Walker flung her arms into the air, only to suffer multiple fractures to her left hand in the process. She filed a $750,000 lawsuit against both the city and the province’s power company, Hydro One, claiming that more could have been done to prevent such a traumatizing “bird strike.” Burlington chose to settle out of court (the dollar figure is secret). But Hydro One refused to admit liability, insisting that reasonable steps were taken to limit the number of cormorants crashing to their deaths—including the installation of 145 “diverters” designed to warn birds about nearby wires.

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There’s a real pissing match at Sunrise Washroom Rentals’ head office

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 4:20 PM - 0 Comments

Sunrise Washroom Rentals offers classier porta-potty experiences than these

The film industry brings big bucks to British Columbia. Last year alone, movie and television producers spent nearly $1.2 billion in the province, translating into 20,000 jobs. Which means a lot of long days on the set—and a lot of bathroom breaks.

Enter Sunrise Washroom Rentals, a B.C. company that has capitalized on a niche but lucrative market: providing upscale outhouses to Hollywood clients in town for a shoot. The firm boasts a fleet of lavish porta-johns with the features of a five-star bathroom, from flush toilets to marble countertops and hot showers. Satisfied customers include the cast and crew of Twilight, X-Men, Battlestar Galactica, and (perhaps most fittingly) The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. As the website proclaims: “Everyone should have the luxuries that our washrooms provide.”

But at head office, the mood is, frankly, in the toilet. A rift between the founding owners, Kerry Vivian and Gordon Firth, recently spilled into court, with Vivian asking a judge to dissolve the company and liquidate its assets because of a “deadlock” over how to run the operation. For a business built on cleanliness, the case unearthed plenty of dirt.

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Jonathan Frid

By Michael Friscolanti - Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at 10:49 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration By Ian Phillips

John Herbert Frid was born on Dec. 2, 1924, in Hamilton, Ont., the youngest son of Herbert Percival Frid, a wealthy construction executive, and his wife, Isabella Flora Frid (née McGregor). His father was a pillar in the community—hospital builder, member of McMaster University’s board of governors, citizen of the year—but John had little interest in joining the family business. “His first love was theatre,” said his cousin, Barbara Wilson. “He had such a beautiful voice.” In high school, John’s friends called him “Mort” because he looked so much like Edgar Bergen’s dummy, Mortimer Snerd.

After a stint with the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War, John enrolled at McMaster, immersing himself in the drama society. With his parents’ blessing (and their generous financial backing), he continued his theatrical training, first at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and then at the Yale School of Drama, where he earned a master’s in directing. Over the next decade, while living in New York, John made his Broadway debut and shared scenes with Katharine Hepburn. By then, he had changed his first name to Jonathan.

In 1967, Jonathan received the phone call that would change his life—transforming a 42-year-old anonymous actor into a national heartthrob. On the other end of the line was his agent, informing him that he had won a bit role on a floundering, low-budget ABC soap opera called Dark Shadows. He had been cast as Barnabas Collins, an 18th-century vampire resurrected into a 20th-century world. It was supposed to be a short-term character; according to the original script, Barnabas was destined to take a wooden stake to the heart within a few weeks. But Jonathan’s performance was so powerful—his portrayal of a reluctantly fanged, guilt-ridden bloodsucker such a hit with audiences—that he literally saved the show from its own impending death.

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Omar Khadr’s day of reckoning

By Michael Friscolanti - Monday, April 30, 2012 at 10:43 AM - 0 Comments

AP/US Department of Defense

As always, the latest “development” in the endless Omar Khadr saga provides few definitive answers. Here’s what we know for sure: Khadr’s official application for a prison transfer—from a cage at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to a cell in his home country—is now on the desk of Vic Toews, Stephen Harper’s public safety minister. And Toews has confirmed, as reluctantly as ever, that he will sign his name to the bottom of the page. At some point.

Beyond that, the future of Canada’s most (in)famous child soldier/homicidal jihadist remains as hazy as ever.

When will the minister actually pull out his pen? When will Khadr spend his final night at Gitmo? Which Canadian prison will become his next temporary home? Could he be eligible for parole the same day his plane touches down? And when the Toronto native is eventually set free (whether it’s five months from now or five years), where exactly will he go? Will Khadr run back into the arms of his notorious family and their fanatical sympathizers? Or will the feds ask a judge to impose special conditions on the convicted war criminal, limiting his movements and dictating his associates?

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Please lock up your valuables, Mr. Harper

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, April 26, 2012 at 11:10 PM - 0 Comments

Memo to all staff at the Prime Minister’s Office: don’t leave your valuables unattended. There is a thief (or thieves) lurking inside the Langevin Block, the PM’s supposedly secure headquarters.

For the second year in a row, the Public Accounts of Canada—the federal government’s three-volume, line-by-line spending breakdown—reveals sticky fingers lurking inside the nation’s highest office. The details are scarce (the Privy Council doesn’t discuss internal security issues) but one thing is clear: the PMO crime spree has cost taxpayers $4,440.

As Maclean’s reported in 2010, the first victim was Jason Ransom, one of Stephen Harper’s two official photographers, who was reimbursed $1,298 after someone swiped his personal laptop. (Ransom’s government-issued computer was being repaired that day, so he was using his own laptop at work). An investigation was launched, but neither the crook nor the Mac was ever found.

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REVIEW: The big miss: my years coaching Tiger Woods

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, April 26, 2012 at 2:03 PM - 0 Comments

Between 2004 and 2010, few people spent more time with Tiger Woods than his swing coach, Hank Haney. After hours on the driving range, day after day, teacher and student would spend hours more inside Tiger’s Florida mansion, dissecting their sessions. Many nights, Haney stayed for supper. “When we were watching television after dinner, he’d sometimes go to the refrigerator to get a sugar-free popsicle,” he writes. “But he never offered me one or ever came back with one.”

In those days, of course, Tiger was still the god of golf, his serial sex addiction a closely guarded secret. Haney insists he had no idea that his star pupil was leading a double life. But in hindsight, those popsicles offered a tiny clue. “It was that quality of paying attention only to his own needs that was so central to his ability to win,” Haney continues. “Winning gave him permission to remain a flawed and in some ways immature person.”

Haney is hardly perfect, either. Once a core member of Tiger’s inner circle, he chose to write his tell-all memoir only after Woods’s world collapsed—and to release it during Masters week, the biggest tournament of the year. And at times, he seems even more petty and self-absorbed than his former friend, poring through stats to prove that he was the best coach Woods ever had. “He’s become less of a golfer,” Haney concludes, “and he’s never going to be the same again.”

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A farmer’s final stand

By Michael Friscolanti - Friday, April 13, 2012 at 3:44 PM - 0 Comments

For six years now, Frank Meyers has been doing his best to ignore the elephant on his farm. Ask him about it—the fact that the federal government wants to kick him off his beloved land in order to build a new headquarters for the military’s elite special forces squad—and the 84-year-old brushes it all aside, like the dirt on his pants. Meyers, a dairy farmer for seven decades, is dealing with his bad luck the only way he knows how: with pride, toughness and a bit of humour. “What are they going to do?” he asks. “Bring a task force in to take me out? They might have to.”

But on Thursday, during a public hearing that will finally decide the fate of his historic property, not even Meyers could stop himself from tearing up. As one of his daughters read an emotional statement for the record, he sat two chairs over, quietly wiping his eyes. “By the time my father was 14, his fulltime job was maintaining this farm,” said Elaine Meyers Steiginga, speaking into a microphone. “I cannot begin to imagine what he is feeling right now, thinking about his lifelong hard labour that he put into this farm, only for it to be gone with just a signature. This wouldn’t just be the end of our family farm. It would be the end of a family legacy.”

For Maclean’s readers, the Meyers legacy has become a familiar one. The direct descendant of a loyalist war hero, Frank Meyers farms the very same plot of land that King George III bestowed on his famous forefather as gratitude for his legendary service during the American Revolution. Now, more than two centuries later, the Canadian government wants it back—ironically enough, to build a new headquarters for Joint Task Force 2, the army’s top-secret commando unit. Since 2007, the public works department has been buying up hundreds of acres directly north of CFB Trenton, the country’s largest and busiest air force base. But Meyers insisted, over and over, that he would never part with his portion, approximately 220 acres. In February, the inevitable happened: Ottawa filed a notice of expropriation.

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Family of a Loyalist war hero vs. Joint Task Force 2

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, April 5, 2012 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Colin O’Connor

In some ways, John Walden Meyers was the 18th-century equivalent of a special forces commando. A New York farmer who sided with the British during the American Revolution, he became a legendary loyalist spy, a giant of a man with fire-red hair and a gift for infiltrating enemy lines. Two centuries later, some of the stories have morphed into myth (according to one uncorroborated tale, he wore moccasins that were pointy at both ends so his footprints couldn’t be tracked), but the historians do agree on one detail: patriot children considered him the bogeyman. If you don’t behave, their mothers would say, Capt. Meyers “will come and eat you.”

The good captain is most famous for directing a late-night raid on the Albany mansion of Philip Schuyler, one of the Continental Army’s highest-ranking officers. Although the mission—to snatch the general—was doomed to fail, Meyers somehow survived the ensuing gun battle and led his troops back to Quebec. “He had plenty of close calls and narrow escapes over the years,” says Doug Knutson, a filmmaker who has spent two decades researching Meyers’s heroics. “He was a strong individual, but more than that, he was very innovative and resourceful.”

Meyers, of course, ended up on the losing side of the revolution, but in recognition of his exemplary service, King George III granted him hundreds of acres of waterfront farmland in what is now Quinte West, Ont., home of Canadian Forces Base Trenton. Today, what’s left of the family property (about 220 acres) belongs to Frank Meyers, an 84-year-old direct descendant who is now embroiled in a losing battle of his own.

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The Shafia honour killing trial—Chapter 2

By Michael Friscolanti - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

CP

FOR THE COMPLETE STORY OF THE HONOUR KILLING TRIAL:
	On the ebook in the Maclean’s magazine iPad app – Get the full story, plus, a week-by-week account by award-winning reporter Michael Friscolanti, as well as documents, video and audio evidence from the Kingston courtroom, and the heartbreaking diary of Rona, Shafia’s first wife and one of his victims.
	Or download our 10-chapter series detailing how the case unfolded.

By Western standards, Mohammad Shafia is not an educated man; born in middle-class Kabul in the early 1950s, he didn’t reach the seventh grade. But as an entrepreneur, he was gifted and ambitious, a stingy deal-maker who turned a small electronics shop into a multi-million-dollar import-export operation. His specialties were Panasonic radios and Peacock brand thermoses, shipped in from Japan. “It was only me,” Shafia told the jury, the pride still evident in his raspy voice. “I had the monopoly on importing those.”

Like many in Afghanistan, Shafia’s first marriage was an arranged one. It was his mother who first spotted young Rona Amir, the pretty daughter of a retired army colonel. Three decades later, police on the other side of the world would find Rona’s diary, detailing the events that led to her wedding day—and the years of “torture” that followed.

“[Shafia’s mother] invited all of us to her house so that her son could have a good look at me,” she wrote in her native Dari. “After our visit her son announced his consent.” When one of Rona’s brothers asked if she “accepted” the union, her answer was eerily prescient: “Give me away in marriage if he is a good man; don’t if he is not.”

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The Shafia honour killing trial–Chapter 1

By Michael Friscolanti - Friday, February 3, 2012 at 7:17 PM - 0 Comments

CP

FOR THE COMPLETE STORY OF THE HONOUR KILLING TRIAL:
	On the ebook in the Maclean’s magazine iPad app – Get the full story, plus, a week-by-week account by award-winning reporter Michael Friscolanti, as well as documents, video and audio evidence from the Kingston courtroom, and the heartbreaking diary of Rona, Shafia’s first wife and one of his victims.
	Or download our 10-chapter series detailing how the case unfolded.

The police diver who swam to the bottom of the canal found Zainab Shafia in the front passenger seat, her face slumped forward, her fingernails painted a light shade of blue. She was 19 years old and had 10 cents in her pocket. Her black cardigan, drenched after hours underwater, was on backwards.

Sahar, her younger sister, was in the rear of the sunken Nissan Sentra, dressed in a pair of tight jeans and a sleeveless top. Her belly button was pierced (a stud with twin stones) and her nails were polished two different colours: purple on the fingers, black on the toes. As always, the stylish 17-year-old was within reach of her cellphone—about to become a crucial clue for investigators above.

Geeti’s lifeless body was floating over the driver’s seat, one arm wrapped around the headrest, the window beside her wide open. Like Sahar—the big sister she idolized—Geeti had a navel ring underneath her brown shirt. Detectives would later find a note she had scribbled to Sahar, full of hearts and red ink: “i WiSH 2 GOD DAT TiLL iM ALIVE I’LL NEVER SEE U SAD!” She was 13.

Rona Amir Mohammad was slouched in the middle back seat, her soaked black hair rubbing against Sahar’s. At 52, she was the eldest of the dead: the girls’ supposed “auntie,” but in fact their dad’s first wife in a secretly polygamous Afghan clan. The day she drowned, Rona put on a blue shirt, three pairs of earrings, and six gold bangles. She was not wearing a seatbelt. None of them were.

It was June 30, 2009, the morning before Canada Day. Det.-Const. Geoff Dempster was supposed to work the afternoon shift, two ’til midnight, but his cellphone rang a few hours early. A colleague in the major crimes unit briefed him about the car full of corpses at the Kingston Mills locks, and asked him to come in as soon as possible. A few minutes after he arrived at police headquarters, three people showed up at the front counter to file a missing persons report: Mohammad Shafia, the girls’ father, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, their mother, and Hamed Shafia, their 18-year-old brother.

Dempster, a veteran cop with short blond hair and a rookie’s face, spent most of that Tuesday shift interviewing mom, dad and son, assuming, at first, that they were grieving relatives devastated to learn that their loved ones were gone. Their initial stories, videotaped for accuracy, were essentially the same. Wealthy Muslim family. Recent immigrants to Canada. Road trip to Niagara Falls, the 10 vacationers split between the Sentra and a silver Lexus SUV. Shafia, Tooba and Hamed all told the detective that they had stopped at a Kingston, Ont., motel on the way home to Montreal, and that Zainab grabbed the car keys to retrieve some clothes. The next morning, the Nissan—and nearly half the family—were gone. “That’s it,” Shafia said. “I don’t know anything else.”

But that was hardly it, as the detective soon realized. The more questions Dempster asked, the stranger their story sounded. Why would these women, after a six-hour road trip from Niagara Falls, pile into the Nissan for a middle-of-the-night joyride? Why did an eyewitness tell on-scene investigators that he saw two cars at the water’s edge that night? And why did the Shafias show up at the station in a green minivan—not the silver Lexus they were driving during the vacation?

Hamed, not a tear in sight, told the detective that he didn’t actually sleep at the motel with the rest of his family. Instead, he climbed back behind the wheel of the Lexus at two o’clock in the morning and continued toward Montreal, more than 300 km away. “I forgot my laptop,” he explained. He was home for only a few minutes, he said, when his dad phoned to tell him the girls were missing.

“How come you came back in the Pontiac?” Dempster asked, referring to the minivan.

“No special reason,” Hamed answered, mumbling about how the Lexus “takes more gas and fuel and stuff like that.”

“The reason for coming back in the Pontiac and not the Lexus was because it’s better on gas?” Dempster pressed.

“Well, that’s one of the reasons.”

“What would be another reason?”

“Nothing, uh, big,” Hamed replied. “Nothing, ya know, that’s worth telling.”

What police discovered over the next three weeks would tell a story so chilling, so unthinkable to most Canadians, that the resulting trial captivated the country like few crimes ever have. Mother, father, and eldest son—motivated by an ancient, barbaric “honour” code—used their Lexus to smash that Nissan over the lip of the Rideau Canal, watching with perverted satisfaction as all four females vanished into the water. “I am happy and my conscience is clear,” Shafia proclaimed the night before his arrest, unaware that a police wiretap was recording his every word. “They haven’t done good and God punished them.”

Today, a different punishment looms: life behind bars. After four months, 58 witnesses, and too many lies to count, a jury found Shafia, Tooba and their beloved Hamed guilty of quadruple murder in the first degree. It took just 15 hours of deliberation for the jurors to reach their verdict.

The evidence, utterly heartbreaking, left no real doubt about the truth. Before they died, the Shafia sisters were caught in the ultimate culture clash, living in Canada but not allowed to be Canadian. They were expected to behave like good Muslim daughters, to wear the hijab and marry a fellow Afghan. And when they rebelled against their father’s “traditions” and “customs”—covertly at first, then for all the community to see—the shame became too much to bear. Only a mass execution (staged to look like a foolish wrong turn) could wash away the stain of their secret boyfriends and revealing clothes.

Rona, it turns out, was simply a convenient throw-in, the infertile first wife who died as she lived. An afterthought.

“They committed treason from beginning to end,” Shafia declared, during another one of his intercepted rants. “They betrayed kindness, they betrayed Islam, they betrayed our religion and creed, they betrayed our tradition, they betrayed everything.”

His daughters died because they were defiant and beautiful and had dreams of their own. Because they were considered property, not people. But the two words at the heart of this sensational case—“honour killing”—do not tell the whole twisted tale. What happened on that pitch-black night is also a story about cries for help that were missed or ignored. About sibling rivalry and family snitches. About young love and old-fashioned police work.

And it’s a story about a custom-built courtroom, where father, mother—but not son—took the stand to proclaim their innocence.

Read the full ebook edition of the Shafia honour killing trial, available for purchase in the Maclean’s iPad app.
Or download the complete story as PDF.

At the Shafia “honour killing” trial, the verdict is in: guilty

By Michael Friscolanti - Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 2:21 PM - 0 Comments

The night before he was arrested for drowning his beautiful Afghan daughters, Mohammad Shafia told his wife and son: “I am happy and my conscience is clear. They haven’t done good and God punished them.” Today, in a courtroom packed to capacity, all three “honour killers” received their punishment: life behind bars.

The guilty verdicts—to four counts each of first-degree murder—were the climax of a sensational trial that captivated the country like few crimes have. In the end, after months of testimony and 15 hours of deliberations, a jury agreed with the prosecution’s theory: that three immigrant sisters were executed by their own father, their own mother, and their own brother because they didn’t behave like good Muslim girls should. Their “treacherous” conduct—boyfriends, tight clothes, independent thoughts—had so shamed the family name that death became the only way to restore their tarnished honour.

What happened to Zainab, Sahar and Geeti was not a foolish wrong turn by an inexperienced driver. It was mass murder, planned and pre-meditated by the people who should have loved them most. Continue…

An allegation so unthinkable

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 8:50 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Vincenzo D'Alto

The Crown and the defence agree on at least one thing: as murder plots go, it was amateur hour.

The whole point (allegedly) was to cover up the mass “honour kill” by making it look like an incompetent wrong turn. Daughter takes car keys, daughter swerves off the road and into the Rideau Canal. But nothing about the “accident” scene looked accidental. Just to get to the water’s edge, the supposedly out-of-control Nissan had to jump a high curb, make a hard left around some rocks, then a quick right around a stone wall. As one investigator testified, “it would have to be driven there on purpose.”

Stupid plan. Simple conclusion. (Or, as another officer put it: “You guys aren’t hit men. You guys don’t know how to cover your tracks properly.”)

But what the jury in Kingston, Ont., must decide, as deliberations finally begin, is whether the absurdity of it all actually benefits the prosecution or the accused. In other words, was the alleged plot so boneheaded that it’s simply not believable? “If the plan was to make it look like an accident, why choose such a difficult place to get to?” asked Peter Kemp, one of the defence lawyers. “You’re trying to make it look like an accident, not make it look like someone knew exactly what they were doing.”

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A mother and son face the truth

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 8:20 AM - 0 Comments

CP

The jury has heard so many conflicting narratives, such wildly different versions of the “truth,” that the evidence sometimes resembles a real-life game of Clue. Shafia at the canal with the Lexus. Zainab at the motel with the car keys. Tooba in the Nissan with the four corpses-to-be (and a nasty fever that caused her to conveniently faint as soon as she heard the splash).

But this week—after three months in court, dozens of witnesses, and one epic round of cross-examination—two things became very apparent: the prosecution’s complete theory of the crime, as laid out in chilling detail by Crown attorney Gerard Laarhuis; and the opposing storyline that defence lawyers seem to have settled on.

Hamed—and only Hamed—at the water’s edge with a rope. (To rescue the women, of course, not to kill them.)

When deliberations do begin, there’d better be lots of chart paper in the jury room.

Continue…