Three members of an immigrant Afghan family were found guilty of first-degree murder on Sunday in what is thought to be Canada's first "honor killing" trial.
Mohammad Shafia, 58, and his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya were convicted, along with their 21-year-old son Hamed, of drowning their three daughters and Shafia's first wife, according to The Associated Press.
They reportedly stashed the dead bodies in the family car, which they pushed into a canal near Kingston, Ontario to make the deaths look like an accident, jurors at the Ontario court ruled.
The bodies of sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar 17, and Geeti, 13, as well as Shafia's first wife Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, were found in the submerged car on June 30, 2009.
Wiretaps played during the trial caught Shafia on tape calling his daughters "filthy" and "whores" for "betraying" his family by dating boys and wearing revealing clothing.
Prosecutors argued that Shafia believed Mohammad backed the girls' westernized lifestyle and wanted to divorce him.
During one recording, Shafia called for the devil to defecate on his daughters' graves, the AP reported.
"It is difficult to conceive of a more despicable, more heinous crime," Ontario Superior Judge Robert Maranger said while handing down the ruling.
"The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your completely twisted concept of honor."
Shafia and his family had been living in Canada since 2007.
He married Yahya, 42, because Mohammad could not have children, but kept them both as his wives, according to the AP.
School officials, teachers and other witnesses testified during the trial that the girls were terrified of their father and feared for their lives.
The oldest, Zainab, fled to a shelter in desperation at one point, witnesses said.
Defense lawyers argued the deaths were an accident after Zainab took her sisters and Mohammad for a late-night joyride while the family was staying at a hotel during a trip to Niagara Falls.
After the trial, Mohammad Shafia, called the ruling "unjust."
"We are not criminal, we are not murderer, we didn't commit the murder," he said through a translator.
His sobbing wife Tooba, said, "I am not a murderer, and I am a mother, a mother."
