KINGSTON, Ont. - A man accused of killing his three daughters is taking the stand in court today, and says his children were cruel to him.
Mohammad Shafia, 58, testified that his family was very liberal, and he let his children wear and do what they wanted.
Shafia and his wife, Tooba Yahya, 41, and their son Hamed, 20, have each pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder.
They're accused of killing Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17 and Geeti Shafia, 13, and Shafia's first wife in a polyagmous marriage.
The four bodies were found June 30, 2009, inside a car submerged in a canal in Kingston, Ont.
Shafia is taking the stand in his own defence today, and says after the deaths he found a picture of Sahar wearing a short skirt and hugging a boy, and that made him angry.
"My children did a lot of cruelty toward me," Shafia said through an interpreter.
He wept on the stand twice, once as he talked about finding pictures of his daughters, and once as he talked about how he forgave Zainab for marrying a Pakistani boy.
"I gave her $100 and I kiss her face," he said.
Both times that Shafia began to cry, Yahya started weeping soon after.
The Crown presented its case in a Kingston court over about six weeks, and wrapped up Monday with an expert in so-called honour killings.
The jury has also heard from technical experts and police, describing the scene the Crown alleges the family staged to look like an accident, and from teachers and social workers who said the girls were afraid of their father.
The family originally told police Zainab took the car keys and left the motel with the other three on a joy ride that turned tragic, but both Yahya and Hamed later told police different versions of the story, placing them at the scene, though Yahya later recanted.
© The Canadian Press, 2011