"An absence," they call it:
In the time leading up to the murder of his sisters and stepmother, Hamed Shafia quashed his remorse by telling himself he had no choice and was simply going along with his father's actions, he told a parole hearing Friday.
In reality, he was doing more than simply going along with it, said Shafia, who was 18 at the time of the killings. "I was aiding him in doing these things," he said.
"So it was this back and forth in my mind, this game I was playing between moral obligation and then this whole notion that, 'OK, I have to go through with it, this is honour,' and all of that stuff."
Shafia, now 34, was pressed about his beliefs and his relationships with his surviving family members as he sought two escorted temporary absences from the medium-security prison where he is serving a life sentence.
In the end, a Parole Board of Canada panel agreed Shafia should be allowed a brief visit to a minimum-security facility but rejected his request for another escorted absence to a mosque in Kingston, Ont.
"You've made a lot of progress. You're moving in the right direction. You have gained insight ... but there is still work there to be done," panel member Mike Bossio told him, stressing the need for a gradual approach.
The panel is expected to release a more detailed written decision at a later date.
Shafia and his parents were found guilty in January 2012 of four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of his teenage sisters and his father's first wife in a polygamous marriage. First-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.
The bodies of Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, and 52-year-old Rona Amir Mohammad were found in a car at the bottom of the Rideau Canal in Kingston in June 2009.
The parole board hates the citizenry.
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