Canal drownings trial jury near complete

The first day of jury selection in the quadruple murder trial of a Montreal couple and their son ended with eight people being chosen for duty.

Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yehya and their son Hamid Mohammad Shafia, 20, are accused of killing the couple's three daughters and Mohammad Shafia's first wife.

On Tuesday, the three accused pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, before the court proceeded to the painstaking process of screening prospective jurors.

The high-profile case made headlines two years ago, after the bodies of the three teenage Shafia sistersZainab, 19, Sahari, 17, and Geeti, 13and that of Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, werefound in a submerged carin the Rideau Canal near Kingston.

More than 1,000 people were summoned to appear at the Kingston, Ont. courthouse for jury selection.

Four women and four men were picked, leaving four jury spots to fill before the trial gets underway.

Accused reported family missing

Mohammad Shafia, whose family is originally from Afghanistan but lived in Montreal's St. Leonard neighbourhood, had reported his daughters missing to Kingston police after a family trip to Niagara Falls.

Authorities later found their car submerged in a Rideau Canal lock near Kingston. The car's front end was up against the lock wall as if the vehicle had plunged in backward.

Shafia, his wife and son were charged with first-degree murder days later, with talk of a so-called honour killing.

The trial is expected to be long and complicated. Every declaration made in court will have to be translated from English to Dari an Afghan dialect of Persian and back, so that the elder Shafia and Yehya understand the proceedings.

"It takes longer and there are several added complications just because of the dynamic between the lawyers asking questions, the defence attorneys, the witnesses, the judge," said Yuri Geifman, with the Association of Translators and Interpreters of Ontario.

Geifman said that because of the issues around interpretation, the trial could last twice as long as the scheduled timetable of two or three months.

A publication ban covers the testimony heard in a month-long preliminary hearing in February 2010.