Yemenis rally for Saleh trial after shootings

 Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Yemen's capital Sunday calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to face trial, a day after his forces and loyalists killed 13 people at a similar demonstration.

"The people want to bring the slaughterer to trial," shouted the protesters who marched from Change Square, epicentre of the uprising that began nearly a year ago, towards Sittin Avenue in the northern district of Sanaa.

"We won't rest until the slaughterer is executed," they chanted. "We don't want Abdrabuh, Ali Saleh controls him," they chanted, referring to Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi.

Saleh is still honorary president but handed authority over to Hadi last month when he signed a Gulf-brokered deal in which he won immunity from prosecution in exchange for ending his 33-year rule when polls are held in February.

Angry youths have staged defiant protests against the plan, which is backed by the United Nations, despite a bloody backlash by Saleh's forces and loyalists that has seen hundreds of them killed.

But Saleh's General People's Congress party insisted on Sunday that the parliament would confirm the immunity deal.

"Measures will be taken to issue the immunity law as per the Gulf plan" after a parliamentary vote of confidence on the newly formed unity government expected this week, Sultan al-Barakani, who represents the GPC's bloc in parliament, told AFP.

The veteran leader said Saturday that he would soon visit the United States ahead of transferring power following a February 21 presidential election.

A diplomat from one of the countries that has sponsored the deal, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Saleh has presented "a list of 412 people" he wants the immunity deal to include.

The list includes his relatives, aides, and officials who had worked with him during his rule, the source said, adding that Saleh was given a U.S. visa "two weeks ago."

But Sunday's protesters reject any such agreements.

"No guarantee, no immunity to Saleh and to those close to him," they shouted.

The protesters, backed by tens of thousands who were met by gunfire from Saleh's forces and loyalists after they arrived on foot Saturday from the second-largest city Taez, called on Hadi to hand over those responsible for the violence to justice.

"Take up your responsibility and hand the killers of the youths over to justice, or resign," said one of the organizers on a loudspeaker as the demonstrators gathered outside Hadi's residence on Sittin Avenue.

Thirteen people were killed on Saturday when security forces and gunmen loyal to Saleh attacked their march in which they were calling for him to be put on trial.

"Thirteen people were killed and 50 others were wounded by live rounds," a medical official said Sunday, updating an earlier toll of nine dead.

The medic from a field hospital in the capital said that 150 other people suffered from breathing difficulties due to tear gas inhalation.

Another medic who confirmed the toll said three of the wounded had succumbed to their injuries while a fourth was shot dead in another protest later on Saturday.

The objective of the five-day-long "March for Life" that turned deadly on Saturday was to press for Saleh and his top allies to face criminal charges for their roles in the violence committed against anti-regime protesters.

Despite being met by live rounds, water cannon and tear gas upon their arrival in Sanaa's south, the crowds who set off from Taez on Tuesday for the 270-kilometre march to Sanaa poured into the capital where they spent the night in Change Square.

Kingston canal deaths trial hears 911 tape

Defence lawyers presented a 911 call to a Kingston, Ont., court that Zainab Shafia made to police before her death, in which she says her boyfriend was angry they had broken up and that he might try to kidnap her.

The jury heard the call Tuesday during cross-examination of Ammar Wahid, Zainab's former boyfriend.

"Like he's been calling my house and you know like he keeps on like not trusting me ... If I don't like, you know, stay with him, he's gonna like kidnap me or something," Zainab is heard saying on the 911 tape.

However, soon after the tape was played, Crown prosecutors introduced police records detailing a police interview with Zainab, where she told them she only made the call to please her mother.

Prosecutors have argued that Wahid and Zainab, who were briefly married, had a relationship that was at the centre of a turbulent conflict in the Shafia family prior to the June 2009 deaths of Zainab, 19, her sisters, Sahar, 17, and Geeti Shafia, 13, as well as Rona Amir Mohammad, 50.

Their bodies were found in a submerged car at the bottom of the Rideau Canal.

Zainab's father Mohammad Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, and their son, Hamed Mohammad Shafia, 20, have all pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder in their deaths.

On Tuesday afternoon, the court heard from two employees of a women's shelter that Zainab visited, as well as a Montreal police officer who went to the Shafia house to check out a complaint.

The Montreal family, originally from Afghanistan, did not approve of the couple's relationship, the court has heard. They also disagreed over whether Zainab should wear a hijab.

The court has heard that Zainab's father called a relative to say he wanted to kill Zainab because she was going to the library, going online, hanging out with friends and dating. Wahid, who was five years older than Zainab at the time, told court that when he and Zainab started their relationship, after he sent her a Valentine's Day card in 2008, she warned him to stay away from her brother Hamed.

"Be aware of my bro," she wrote him in an email. "If sometimes wanna talk come in the library. And if my bro is around act like complete stranger...I [don't] want to give him the slightest idea that we [are] friends."

About a month after they started dating in secret Zainab invited Wahid over to the family house when her parents were out. But Hamed found out and asked him to leave. He was polite about it, Wahid testified, but after that incident the family pulled Zainab out of school for several months in which she was barely allowed to leave her room.

Ammar Wahid finished testifying Tuesday morning. (CBC)The young couple managed to start seeing each other again in the spring of 2009, which is also when Zainab ran away to a women's shelter. Her mother convinced her to come home by promising to facilitate a marriage between Zainab and Wahid, he testified.

But the hastily arranged wedding, which took place in mid-May while Zainab's father was in Dubai on business, was a disaster, court has heard. No one from Wahid's family attended, and a Shafia family drama culminated in Yahya fainting and crying. Zainab's mother and brother convinced Zainab to end the marriage for the sake of her family, Wahid said. They divorced the next day.

"Obviously we loved each other, so it hurt both of us," Wahid told court Tuesday.

Emails from Zainab, entered as court exhibits, from June make it clear she still cared deeply for Wahid, ending one note with the signoff "ur wife...and best friend Zainab."

"One thing [I'm] really happy about is that it was my dream to marry u [and] I did it once," she wrote on June 2. "Even one day if [something] happens to us like dead I [won't] die with out my dream being full filled...We had an amazing love story 2gether."

Later that month, when Mohammad returned home from Dubai, he said he forgave her for marrying Wahid and even let her get a job and go back to her own school, Wahid said. But the Crown alleges that at the same time Mohammad was plotting to kill Zainab, and trying to recruit relatives to help.

It was also around that time that someone was conducting Internet searches on a computer used mostly by Hamed such as "where to commit a murder" and "can a prisoner have rights to sell his real estate."