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It seems Germany may gain more economic control over Europe than it ever had through force of arms during the height of the Reich.

“Why would he want Zainab killed?” prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis asked.

Quoting Mr. Shafia, the witness said, “She is a stubborn lady, she doesn’t listen to me. She goes to the library for the Internet. She goes outside.”

He referred to his oldest daughter, the man said, as “a prostitute, a *****. Ugly words.”

He said he believes Mr. Shafia was trying to inflame his emotions, appeal to him as a fellow Afghan man, to enlist his help in the “murder plan.”

He wasn’t asked by Mr. Laarhuis to speculate on the alleged motive for throwing the other girls and his first wife into the lethal mix, but Mr. Shafia’s lawyer, Peter Kemp, did invite him to talk about a broader motive.

“The motive was clear,” the relative replied.

First, he said, as the eldest girl, Zainab was “a very bright lady, able to defend her rights,” a leader within the family, and Mr. Shafia didn’t want her siblings to follow her example. And little Geeti, he said, “If she was not killed, she was a very good witness. She would have told you, like a nightingale.” The same held true for Sahar and Ms. Amir, he said, and Ms. Amir also wanted to divorce him and had asked for a $50,000 settlement too.

“In countries like Dubai, Pakistan, Afghanistan,” the man said, wonderingly, “all the women, all the children and youth, in Afghanistan, how do they live?

“But when they come to North America, it can be felt,” he said, meaning freedom. “A child comes to this part of the world, he goes outside — he learns. He sees what are the rights, and whatever is against the human laws.”

Zainab and her sisters hungered for this freedom, the man said.

In fact, he said, her supposed keen desire to marry a Pakistani boyfriend — against her parents’ wishes, she did, for all of a half-day before the marriage was annulled — was born of her desperation to get out from under her father’s control. As a result, the relative considered it a “forced marriage,” forced upon Zainab by the grotesque restrictions under which she lived — her brother Hamed spying on her, following her, when their father was working abroad.

She told the relative, “I don’t want this life. I want to get out of this house.”

“God’s curse on them . . . may the devil sh*t on their graves,” Shafia said, in a conversation with his second wife, Tooba, and son, Hamed, that was secretly recorded by police. “Is that what a daughter should be? Would (a daughter) be such a *****?”

Prosecutor Laurie Lacelle revealed the excerpt from a wiretap during an hour and a half opening address to the six-man, six-woman jury. The cavernous room of Kingston’s 153-year-old limestone courthouse was full with dozens of journalists and roughly 100 spectators, as Canada’s first ever mass honour killing case began to unspool in public for the first time.

Shafia, 58, Tooba, 41, and Hamed, 20, are accused of killing Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, Geeti, 13, and Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, who was Shafia’s first wife. The four members of the Afghan family were found dead in a car discovered submerged in a shallow canal in Kingston on June 30, 2009.

Jurors were told that they will hear evidence about the ancient cultural practice of honour killing, in which the chastity and obedience of female family members is paramount. In some cases, families believe the only way to cleanse shame and restore honour is to kill offending women.

Geeti Shafia, who was 13, told the officers about an incident a week earlier when her father and brother were angry that she and her siblings came home late from a trip to a shopping centre.

“She told police that her father had pulled her hair and hit her on the face,” Lacelle said, reading the statement of facts aloud. “She told police that her brother Hamed hit her in the eye with his fist.

“Geeti also told police that her father often threatened that he was going to kill them.”

Choquette did not see any marks on Geeti but saw a mark near the right eye of one of her sisters.

“Sahar told police that she had been slapped by Hamed,” Lacelle said, reading the statement to the jurors. “She also told them that she had seen the violence to which her siblings had been subjected.”

The children said that they called police on April 17 because they were walking home from school and got a phone call from their mother Tooba, who told them that their 19-year-old sister Zainab had run away from home.

“Their mother was reported to be afraid for their lives because the oldest daughter Zainab had left the house and they did not know where she was,” the statement says. “The children were concerned about the reaction of their father to this information.”

Earlier Tuesday, jurors heard that Zainab had fled to a women’s shelter that day with the help of her boyfriend Ammar Wahid, to escape her domineering father.

Sahar, who was 17, and Geeti told police that they had seen their father shake Zainab by her hair because he did not like her boyfriend, according to the statement.

“Sahar and Geeti told police that they wanted to leave home because there is a lot of violence in the home,” according to the statement. “They said they were afraid of their father.”