The woman charged in connection with the death of four women, including her three daughters, said her husband became very angry after finding condoms in their teenaged daughter's bedroom, but that only happened after the girl's death.
Tooba Yahya continued to testify in her own defence in a Kingston, Ont. courtroom Wednesday. Yahya, her husband Mohammad Shafia, and their son Hamed are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder.
They stand accused of killing Shafia sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, as well as Shafia's first wife Rona Mohammad, 52. They have pleaded not guilty.
The Crown alleges that Shafia was angry at the girls before they died because they were dating boys and rebelling against the family rules, an anger that led to their deaths in a so-called honour killing.
The Crown points to police surveillance audiotapes recorded a couple of weeks after the women's deaths, in which Shafia can be heard calling them "treacherous" and "whores."
Both Shafia and Yahya have denied the women died in an honour killing. Yahya testified Tuesday that she had never heard of honour killings before police used the term in this case.
"This is something which I never heard," she testified on Tuesday. "Honour killing, I heard that this time which they put that name to our case which is really shameful for us."
Police found the women's bodies submerged in a car at the bottom of a Kingston canal on June 30, 2009. The family was returning home to Montreal after a trip to Niagara Falls, Ont.
As part of its attempt to prove the women died in an honour killing, the Crown alleges Shafia was not only angry about finding condoms in Sahar's bedroom, but also over a photo album showing the teen hugging her boyfriend.
Yahya testified Tuesday that Shafia only found the album on July 5 or 6 when they cleaned the girl's bedroom, and became enraged. However, Crown attorney Gerard Laarhuis showed video evidence in court that appeared to contradict the woman's testimony.
The video was taken before Yahya said Shafia found the album, and shows the couple leafing through the album, showing family pictures to reporters shortly after the women died.
Yahya said there may have been more than one copy of that particular photo album, which has a princess on the front cover, in their home. However, under questioning from Laarhuis she couldn't say exactly how many they had.
She said if they had more than one of the same album, it was likely because Sahar got copies of the photographs.
Laarhuis argued that if there were multiple albums around the home with the same pictures, Shafia "would be seeing these pictures all the time. He would be ballistic."
