|
Publication
bans no longer automatic to protect police dirty tricks |
Is Canadian media no more than
an arm of the police? | The
interrogation room (Reid Technique) | Monique
Turenne | John Chalmers |
Jean Paul Aubee |
Sebastian Burns
and Atif Rafay
Wilfred
Hathway: Al Haslett,
the main instigator of the sting on Rafay and Burns was a police
operative in coercing a confession from Hathway in April, 2004
|
Defence committee for Rafay and Burns | Full scrapbook of trial reports:
page one | page
two
 Defence Committee's
Research | Analysis of
the sting | Australia
emulating RCMP? | RCMP "Lifestyle"
stings
- Sarah Isaacs
-
-
- Because
of the persistant work of Sarah Isaacs, the case is receiving
more balanced coverage.We would point out that David Milgaard would not have been
freed without the dedication of Joyce Milgaard; the Klassen
case would
not have been resolved without this website.
injusticebusters
have posted the regular media clippings so people can see just
how easily all our major media is led to give the state's point
of view. There is no independent analysis, no research, no search
for truth. In accepting police and prosecution smearing of those
charged, all presumption of innocence is lost and the media collaborates
in sending innocent persons to prison
-
Burns-Rafay to become
a TV documentary
The North Shore Outlook,
Oct 28, 2004
NORTH VANCOUVER (BC Newspaper
Group) - They've been sentenced to a lifetime of prison-issue
jumpsuits and cafeteria meals but don't expect you've heard the
last from Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay.
Last Thursday, one day before
King County Superior Court judge Charles Mertel handed the former
West Vancouver high school students three consecutive life prison
terms without the possibility of parole inside a packed Seattle
courtroom, the U.S. cable network Court TV started preliminary
interviews for a one-hour investigative documentary program about
the high-profile murder case.
Susan Levit, a freelance producer
for the program, confirmed to The North Shore Outlook Monday
that Court TV had been following the Burns-Rafay trial but were
waiting for the final sentencing "to go ahead and do it."
She said the documentary is tentatively scheduled to air in prime
time next spring.
"It's an interesting case
on a couple of different levels," said the longtime television
producer.
In addition to "the crime
itself," Levit said the undercover work done by the RCMP
operators was a compelling element of the story.
"It's just an interesting
case. Court TV does a lot of these kinds of stories. "Literally,
we just started," she added during a brief telephone interview
from New York.
WVPD Insp. Bob Fontaine, who
liaised with the Bellevue Police Department after the murders
and interviewed some of the key players in the case, was one
of the first people contacted by Court TV for a preliminary interview.
"They wanted some of the
details about the West Vancouver Police Department's involvement
in the case," Fontaine said. "I'm not surprised about
the continued interest in the case because of all of the strange
turns this case took: the allegation of sexual relations with
the lawyer; the horrific nature of the murder; and also with
the family and friends trying to appeal the conviction with a
new Web site."
Burns and Rafay, convicted
in May of the brutal triple-murder of Rafay's family in Bellevue,
Wash., in 1994, have already achieved a minor degree of celebrity
infamy in the United States. Last month, the pair was featured
in the season premiere of the U.S. news program 48 Hours Investigates
in an in-depth segment entitled "Written in Blood."
During the program, correspondent
Peter Van Sant interviewed Burns' sister, Tiffany, an on- camera
TV reporter in Cleveland; his high school girlfriend, Sarah Isaacs;
and his parents, among others.
It's entirely possible that
a movie of the week based on the murder could follow. The case
does, after all, have all the elements of a sensational murder
mystery: Greed, a cold-blooded murder, sex and betrayal. And
if you miss the movie you'll probably be able to pick up a copy
of the book. The plot line also seems perfectly suited for true
crime master Anne Rule, a Seattle-based writer who just finished
penning a non-fiction story about the Green River Killer.
What's next for Burns and Rafay?
Soon, the pair will be transported to a correctional facility
in Sheldon, Wash. for classification. They are destined for a
'Level 4' prison in Washington State, most likely in separate
facilities. Facing three consecutive life sentences, Burns and
Rafay should have plenty of time to work on launching an appeal
and, perhaps, a book manuscript. After all, it doesn't seem like
the public is ready to turn the page on this sensational crime.
Canadian pair get life for killing
of family
- Judge unimpressed
as convicted men make emotional pitches in Seattle court
By JANE ARMSTRONG,
Globe and Mail, Oct 23, 2004
SEATTLE - After 10 years of
steadfast denials, convicted Canadian killers Sebastian Burns
and Atif Rafay have been sent to jail for the rest of their lives
for massacring Mr. Rafay's entire family in a crime the judge
called ''vicious'' and ''chilling.''
At a sentencing hearing in
a Seattle courtroom, both men made emotional pitches to a crowd
of spectators, police officers and jurors who had gathered for
the final act of the decade-long judicial drama.
Mr. Burns, who police said
wielded a baseball bat on the defenceless Rafay family, held
court for more than an hour, pleading his innocence and arguing
that he didn't get a fair trial.
It was a bizarre, theatrical
turn more suited to a stage than a sedate courtroom. Gesturing
broadly and speaking in a booming voice, Mr. Burns repeated his
claim that he was wrongly convicted, saying he was a scared 19-year-old
who made false confessions to Canadian Mounties because he was
terrified they might kill him.
Mr. Burns and Mr. Rafay were
arrested in British Columbia nine years ago after an elaborate
undercover police operation in which officers posing as hardcore
criminals extracted videotaped confessions from the then-teenagers
on how they planned and executed the savage triple murder.
Referring to himself in the
third-person as a "kid," and cribbing lines from gangster
movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas, Mr. Burns
directed most of his comments to the lens of a pool video camera,
which is permitted in some U.S. courtrooms.
He said police in Washington
didn't investigate other suspects and he even suggested extremist
Muslims might have killed the family.
"I think any objective
professional, any objective lay person, would conclude that we
were defending ourselves in this trial with both arms tied behind
our backs," Mr. Burns said, his eyes flashing with anger.
Twice, Judge Charles Mertel
urged Mr. Burns to wrap up his remarks.
Afterward, the judge lambasted
him for the crime and for his lengthy, final speech, which he
described as disingenuous.
"Mr. Burns, you are not
immoral," Judge Mertel said. "You are amoral. You have
no moral rudder."
Judge Mertel had kinder words
for Mr. Rafay, who spoke briefly and tearfully about his parents
and sister.
"I loved my parents very
much," Mr. Rafay said as he stood facing the judge. Mr.
Rafay, who did not testify, said he will continue to "struggle
for the truth."
Mr. Rafay, like Mr. Burns,
said he too was brought down by falsely bragging to police.
"The impersonation I gave
on videotape is alien to anything I ever felt," he said,
adding that the loss of his parents left him utterly bereft."
He said he admired his father and was extremely close to his
mother.
Judge Mertel said he believes
Mr. Rafay "has a moral compass" that was tragically
displaced when he met Mr. Burns.
Judge Mertel handed out three
life sentences to each defendant for each of the murders. The
sentences are to be served consecutively with no chance of parole,
meaning the two will spend the rest of their lives in a U.S.
prison.
It was the only possible sentence,
under Washington state law, for a conviction on aggravated murder.
Despite the judge's harsh words,
the two Canadians do have supporters. Mr. Burns's family and
friends have supported his claims. Yesterday, they held a news
conference after the hearing.
"My brother didn't murder
anyone," Mr. Burns's sister, Tiffany, said. "He was
railroaded. The people who murdered the Rafays are still out
there."
The saga began in a Seattle
suburb in 1994 when Mr. Burns made a 911 call to report a break-in
at Mr. Rafay's home. When police arrived they found the bludgeoned
bodies of Mr. Rafay's father, mother and disabled sister.
The family had just moved to
Washington from Vancouver, where they had raised their family.
Mr. Burns and Mr. Rafay were
friends who met at a West Vancouver high school, where they were
both enrolled in an international baccalaureate program and were
top students. They were visiting Mr. Rafay's family when the
slayings occurred.
After their arrest, Mr. Burns
and Mr. Rafay fought extradition to the United States. The case
went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. Ottawa eventually
agreed to hand over the pair after prosecutors agreed not to
seek the death penalty.
Also in the
courtroom yesterday were the undercover Mounties who extracted
the confessions. The officers, who can't be named under a court
order, stared intently at Mr. Burns during his speech.
Their boss, Staff-Sergeant
Peter Marsh, said afterward that he is relieved the case is over.
"It feels good,"
he said. "It always feels good to see closure."
© 2004 Bell Globemedia
Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Is
Canadian media no more than an arm of the police?
Life, No Parole: Vancouver
pair sentenced for 3 brutal U.S. murders
Ian Mulgrew, Vancouver Sun,
October 23, 2004
SEATTLE -- Atif Rafay and Sebastian
Burns have been ordered imprisoned for three consecutive life
terms for brutally bludgeoning Rafay's mother, father and sister
to death in their Seattle home a decade ago.
King County Superior Court
Judge Charles Mertel dismissed the whingeing of the two former
North and West Vancouver men, saying Rafay, 28, and Burns, 29,
thought they could outwit police with a "perfect murder"
and a carefully orchestrated alibi.
Mertel called complaints about
the trial and police investigation "frivolous."
But the mandatory prison sentences
will not bring to an end the infamous case that has stretched
through years of extradition battles and legal wrangling about
undercover police conduct since Rafay's family members were found
slain in their home July 13, 1994.
Supporters of the two and the
family of Burns have set up an appeal committee and are hoping
to have the convictions for aggravated first-degree murder reversed.
The jury took 3 1/2 days in
May after a six-month trial to find the Canadians guilty in the
bloody beating deaths of Rafay's parents, Tariq and Sultana,
and his sister, Basma. The 20-year-old autistic woman tried desperately
to fight off her attacker and was still moaning in her bedroom
when police arrived.
Tariq, 56, was described as
an intelligent, devout Muslim who wrote poetry and held a doctorate
in engineering.
Sultana, also 56, held a master's
degree in nutrition from Colorado State University, where she
and her future husband had met more than two decades before.
They moved from Vancouver to the affluent Somerset neighbourhood
of Seattle in late 1993 because Tariq found work at Alpha Engineering.
The court heard Rafay wasn't
able to help in the killing because he was squeamish and that
Burns battered the family to death with a baseball bat while
dressed only in his underwear.
He then took a shower and the
two made the home look as if there had been a robbery.
On undercover police video
tapes, the two laughed about the sanguinary deaths. Later, they
suggested militant Muslims or hit men from Canada committed the
crime and that they lied to the RCMP officers because they thought
they were being set up.
But jurors, who watched and
listened to the secretly recorded conversations, didn't buy it.
They concluded the two smart
but arrogant teens slaughtered the family for about $500,000
in insurance money and property.
In pronouncing sentence Friday,
Mertel was especially disdainful of Burns, who turned his back
when asked if he had anything to say, and spent 90 minutes making
a psychotic, rambling address to the courtroom.
Prosecutors suppressed smirks
at the bizarre oration, jurors from the case who sat in the gallery
shifted uneasily, and even his own lawyers kept their eyes cast
down looking uncomfortable.
"We have been convicted
of a crime we did not commit," Burns hectored as his family
sat in the crowded public gallery nodding encouragement.
He looked at the ceiling, he
gesticulated with his arms.
"I think out trial was
unfair," Burns went on. "We were defending ourselves
in this trial with both arms tied behind our back. With all due
respect to the jurors, the verdict is wrong. We did not commit
the crime."
Burns claimed his three lawyers
-- Song Richardson, Amanda Lee and Jeff Robinson, all experienced
well-respected defence lawyers -- didn't do their job properly.
But Judge Mertel could barely
conceal his disgust.
"It's chilling your recitation
of what you feel has occurred over these many years," he
said when the handsome young man finished. "It's chilling
in the lack of remorse you show for the tragedy that this crime
represents. Your remorse for these victims was likely a throw-away
line that your lawyer gave you on the break."
"That's not true,"
Burns started to say, but Mertel cut him off.
"You got to talk, now
I get to talk," the judge sternly admonished the convicted
killer.
"It was chilling, the
lack of remorse you expressed for the brutally massacred family
in this court's view. You're not immoral, you're amoral. You
have no moral rudder. You are an arrogant convicted killer. You
are not a kid as you refer to yourself. You have been convicted
of the premeditated, naked massacre of this family."
Normally, the two would have
faced execution for such brutal murders but prosecutors agreed
not to seek the death penalty in order to have them extradited
from Canada where they fled after the killings.
Mertel was kinder in sentencing
Rafay to jail for the rest of his days although the soft-spoken,
slight young man maintained he was framed, too.
"We are innocent,"
he told the judge. "I loved my parents and revere them to
this day. I cannot convey to you the mortification I felt over
the course of this trial."
He insisted that the notion
he wanted to benefit from this "brutal, iniquitous crime"
was preposterous and that the crime had dashed his scholarly
hopes and devastated him.
"I was utterly bereft,"
he said choking back tears.
Mertel was moved to say that
he believed Rafay felt more remorse than Burns, and that he "had
a moral compass."
"I suspect you were remorseful
at the time of the killing and that you placed the covering over
your mother's face after she was beaten to death," the judge
said.
Rafay buried his face in his
hands.
"But I cannot explain
why you would do it," Mertel continued. "You were convicted
on your own confession, your own frightening confession casually
given."
He gave short shrift to the
arguments that the trial had been unfair or their lawyers less
than competent.
"There is absolutely zero
merit in these claims," Mertel said.
Prosecutor James Konat also
urged Mertel to demand the two pay restitution to the state for
the cost of the investigation and trial -- said to be in the
millions of dollars.
Although neither has the assets
to cover such bills, Konat said it will ensure assets from the
Rafay family estate do not benefit the killers.
He said $135,000 of more than
$300,000 in life insurance has already been paid and he said
the insurance company wanted to know only last week who should
get the rest.
Judge Mertel said a later hearing
will determine how to handle the restitution issues.
Outside the courtroom, Burns'
sister Tiffany told reporters the fight to gain her brother's
freedom is only beginning.
"These boys did not kill
anyone," said the woman, who works as a broadcast journalist.
"They have been wrongly accused and wrongly convicted....The
media have swallowed police propaganda hook, line and sinker."
Jurors who had come for the
sentencing walked away shaking their heads.
"No comment," was
all they would say when pressed by reporters.
imulgrew@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2004
Rafay, Burns Sentenced
To Life In Prison Without Parole
By KOMO
Staff & News Services, October 22, 2004
SEATTLE - A 10-year legal marathon
ended Friday as Atif Rafay and Glen Sebastian Burns were each
sentenced to three consecutive life prison terms without parole
for the bludgeoning death of Rafay's parents and sister.
A King County Superior Court
jury convicted the two men of three counts of aggravated first-degree
murder in May after a six-month trial.
The odyssey began when the
two Canadians fled north across the U.S.-Canadian border two
days after reporting the deaths in 1994.
Before sentence was imposed,
Burns addressed the court for nearly two hours - a testimonial
of sorts that included references to mobster and murder movies
such as "Good Fellas" and "American Beauty."
"We've been tried, we've
been convicted for something we didn't do. We're still waiting
for our day in court," Burns said, keeping his back to King
County Superior Court Judge Charles W. Mertel and prosecutors.
Mertel chastised Burns for
lack of remorse and the "selective memory" that his
version of events suggested.
"It's chilling, your recitation
of what you feel has occurred," Mertel said.
"Mr. Burns, you are not
immoral, you are amoral. You are an arrogant convicted killer."
Rafay also maintained his innocence
but choked back tears as addressed the court, saying the loss
of his parents and sister has caused him great anguish.
"I considered having my
family the greatest of privileges," he said, speaking of
his admiration for his father's brilliance and generosity and
the wit and charm of his mother, to whom he said he was closest.
He said he regretted his "youthful embarrassment" of
his autistic sister "who I lost to silence."
Mertel ordered both men to
repay costs of the Rafay family's burial as well as legal expenses
and costs of the investigation in both Canada and the United
States.
Neither man is allowed contact
with the remaining Rafay family members - who live in Canada,
Florida and Pakistan - nor can they profit in any way from the
crimes.
Lawyers for the two men planned
to appeal. They have 30 days from the time of sentencing to do
so.
Burns' lawyer, Brian J. Todd,
was an 11th-hour hire by the family and said he needed time to
review all the evidence.
"There's a lot of issues
that need to be looked at here," Todd said. "There
certainly should be a review of it."
At a news conference after
sentencing, Burns' family and several supporters criticized prosecutors
and detectives whom they say "railroaded" Rafay and
Burns.
"These boys did not kill
anyone," said Burns' sister, Tiffany. She characterized
the case and the subsequent media reports as a "campaign
to demonize" the two men.
"I'm sick of my brother
being portrayed as a monster," she said.
"My son has never been
a violent person," Dave Burns added.
Teens at the time, Burns and
Rafay fled to Vancouver, British Columbia, shortly after reporting
they had found Tariq and Sultana Rafay and their 20-year-old
daughter, Basma, beaten to death in the Rafay's suburban Bellevue
home on July 12, 1994.
The two were charged with aggravated
first-degree murder, punishable in Washington by either death
or life in prison without parole.
Prosecutors alleged Burns,
now 29, wielded the aluminum bat used in the killings, and that
he and Rafay, 28, planned the murders for money.
The two were arrested in Vancouver
in August 1995, the same month that the family estate, valued
at about $300,000, was turned over to Rafay, who had just completed
his first year at Cornell University.
For years, Canadian authorities
refused to send them back to Washington because of the chance
of their execution. The two were finally returned here in 2001,
after King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng agreed not to seek the
death penalty.
Defense lawyers insisted throughout
the trial that the two merely found the bodies when they returned
from seeing a movie, and that police had focused too much on
Burns and Rafay and not enough on other suspects.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
planted bugs in the defendants' home and car - tactics that were
legal in Canada but wouldn't have been allowed in the United
States - and agents posed as gangsters to obtain taped confessions
from the two before arresting them.
Burns' then-lawyer, Song Richardson,
sought to bar the videotaped confession from trial, but Mertel
allowed it, saying if the methods were legal in Canada they were
admissible under international treaty.
The case took bizarre twists,
with Burns being assigned to Richardson after jail guards reported
seeing him having sex with his previous lawyer, Theresa Olson,
in a jail interview room. Olson has denied the accusation, characterizing
the encounter as "a hug gone bad."
Olson lost her job as a public
defender, and a disciplinary hearing examiner has recommended
she be suspended from practicing law for two years.
Life without parole in
Rafay family killings
From KING Staff Reports
and Wire Reports, October 22, 2004
SEATTLE - Glen Sebastian Burns
and Atif Rafay, both convicted of killing Rafay's parents and
sister in Bellevue, Wash. 10 years ago have been given life sentences
without the possibility of parole.
"Mr. Burns, you're not
immoral - you're amoral. You have no moral rudder," King
County Judge Charles Mertel told Burns during the back-to-back
sentencing hearings. "You are an arrogant, convicted killer."
Clearly annoyed and disturbed
by Burn, Mertel actually sentenced him to three life sentences
-- to be served one after the other - without the possibility
of parole. Burns is also prohibited from profiting in any way
from the crime through book, movies or other artistic works.
In his chance to address the
court before he was sentenced, Burns criticized the way evidence
was presented in the trial, complaining that the jury was not
allowed to understand the his state of mind when he and Rafay
told Canadian police that they had committed the killings.
Rafay was given the same sentence
just minutes later, but in contrast to Burns, who criticized
the trial before he was sentenced, cried on the stand.
Burns and Rafay had both been
expected to receive mandatory life sentences for the death of
Rafay's parents and sister at their Bellevue home in 1994.
The two are planning, nevertheless,
to ask for a new trial on the grounds that their old lawyers
were ineffective.
In May of 2004, a King County
jury found Burns and Rafay guilty of the killings. Following
a six-month trial, each was convicted on three counts of aggravated
first-degree murder, concluding a legal odyssey that began when
they fled to Canada two days after reporting the deaths.
Because prosecutors agreed
not to seek the death penalty in exchange for their extradition
from Canada, Burns and Rafay, both 28, faced life in prison without
parole - the only other possible sentence in Washington for an
aggravated murder conviction.
Sebastian Burns is accused
of killing the parents and autistic sister of his co-defendant
Atif Rafay.
Tariq and Sultana Rafay and
their 20-year-old daughter, Basma, were beaten to death with
baseball bats on July 12, 1994, four months after they moved
from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Bellevue.
Prosecutors said Burns wielded
the aluminum bat, while both he and Rafay planned the killings
for money: The two were arrested in Vancouver in August 1995,
the same month that the family estate, valued at about $300,000,
was turned over to Rafay, who had just completed his first year
at Cornell University.
Lawyers for Burns, who is Canadian,
and Rafay insisted throughout the trial that the two merely found
the bodies when they returned from seeing the movie "The
Lion King," and that police had wrongly focused the investigation
on them to the exclusion of other suspects.
But Royal Canadian Mounted
Police planted bugs in the defendants' home and car - tactics
that would have been illegal in the United States but legal in
Canada - and agents posed as gangsters to obtain taped confessions
from the two before arresting them.
Canadian authorities refused
to send them back to Washington state, however, as long as there
was a chance they might face the death penalty. King County Prosecutor
Norm Maleng agreed in 2001 that he would not seek their execution,
and the two were returned.
The case continued to take
bizarre twists, with Burns being assigned new counsel after King
County Jail guards reported seeing him having sexual relations
with his lawyer, Theresa Olson, in a jail interview room.
She lost her job with the public
defense agency she worked for and has been practicing civil law.
Though she previously admitted
having jailhouse sexual contact with Burns, she now denies it.
Burns' new lawyer, Song Richardson,
sought to bar the videotaped confession from trial, citing the
RCMP's tactics. King County Superior Court Judge Charles Mertel
allowed it, on the grounds that if the methods were legal in
Canada they were admissible under international treaty.
During the trial, Richardson
told jurors the undercover officers posed so effectively as gangsters
that they thoroughly frightened Burns - then still in his teens
- into giving a false confession.
The Associated Press contributed
to this report. Online
Burns and Rafay set to
be sentenced today
by Noel S. Brady, Journal
Reporter, October 22, 2004
BELLEVUE -- After 10 years,
the day of reckoning for two Canadians convicted of a triple
murder is here.
But even as Glen Sebastian
Burns and Atif Rafay argue for a new trial before their scheduled
sentencing today, a growing network of Americans and Canadians
who believe they're innocent are formulating a plan to help the
duo overturn their convictions for the murders of Rafay's parents
and sister in 1994.
``I just felt the more I heard
the more I thought they were innocent,'' said Vanessa Rockel
of Vancouver, B.C., who, along with fellow Canadian Sarah Isaacs,
has formed the Appeal Campaign for Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns
to correct what they see as a gross injustice. Burns' parents
and sister are part of the organization.
``One of the biggest obstacles
in the case has been public perception,'' Rockel said. ``It's
had a horrendous influence on the case, and it cost Atif and
Sebastian their freedom.''
Burns, 29, and Rafay, 28, are
scheduled to appear in court today for sentencing on three counts
each of aggravated first-degree murder. But before King County
Superior Court Judge Charles Mertel sentences them, attorneys
for Burns and Rafay are expected to argue their case for a new
trial based on ineffective assistance of counsel.
Loss of confidence
Burns said he lost confidence
in his trial attorneys, Jeff Robinson and Song Richardson, when
they undermined his decision to testify in his own defense during
the trial, which ended in May. In documents filed in court, Burns
also accuses his former attorneys of withholding important evidence
from him.
If Judge Mertel denies Burns'
and Rafay's motion for a new trial, he is expected to proceed
immediately to sentencing. In that case, Mertel has no other
choice but to sentence them to life in prison without parole.
After a six-month trial, a
jury found Burns and Rafay guilty of the baseball bat murders
of Rafay's parents, Tariq and Sultana Rafay, and his 20-year-old
sister, Basma, at the family's Bellevue home. Prosecutors said
they did it for a $500,000 inheritance that Atif Rafay stood
to receive as sole survivor in his immediate family.
``The more we can increase
the public perception that they are innocent, the better chance
they have for an appeal or getting transferred to Canada,'' Rockel
said.
Impassioned observers
Rockel had never met Burns
and Rafay prior to their arrests in 1995. Her introduction to
their case came during their trial when she accompanied Isaacs
to Seattle to watch the proceedings.
Isaacs had dated Burns prior
to his arrest by undercover Canadian police.
What convinced Rockel of Burns'
and Rafay's innocence wasn't what she heard in the trial, she
said, but what she didn't hear.
``I just haven't seen anything
to make me believe they are guilty,'' she said.
At least 25 active members
of her organization agree. They believe Burns and Rafay were
railroaded in a hasty attempt to solve Bellevue's worst murder
case.
They question the tactics employed
by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to draw confessions from
Burns and Rafay.
Undercover police posed as
criminal gangsters and pressured Burns and Rafay with favors
and veiled threats of violence to get them to confess.
Burns and Rafay say the confessions
were false and offered only to save their lives.
``No human being should be
put in the position that this undercover operation put Sebastian
and Atif in,'' Rockel said. ``And any human being would almost
certainly confess in this situation, regardless of guilt or innocence.''
Different perspective
The campaign also intends to
correct misinformation that Rockel said has appeared in media
accounts of the murders.
She and her supporters take
exception to media accounts that Burns and Rafay ``fled'' to
Canada after the murders. That's where they lived, Rockel said.
Why wouldn't they want to go home?
They also argue that news accounts
of Burns' and Rafay's ``suspicious behavior'' following the murders
were misleading and biased toward the prosecution.
Furthermore, Rockel questions
criticism heaped upon Rafay and Burns for not helping his sister,
Basma, when they found her clinging to life in Rafay house, as
they claimed.
Rockel argues that Canadians
are instructed not to touch injured people, but only to call
for help.
``If he wanted to inherit all
of the money and not be fingered as a killer along with Sebastian,''
Rockel said, ``he would have made sure that Basma was dead.''
Rockel and her associates have
established a Web site for their cause at www.rafayburnsappeal.com.
Men accused of killing
Bellevue family to receive sentences
KING NEWS, October 22, 2004
SEATTLE - Two men accused of
killing an Eastside family a decade ago will learn their fate
Friday.
Glen Sebastian Burns and Atif
Rafay were expected to receive mandatory life sentences for the
death of Rafay's parents and sister at their Bellevue home in
1994.
The two were planning to ask
for a new trial on the grounds that their old lawyers were ineffective.
In May of 2004, a King County
jury found Burns and Rafay guilty of the killings. Following
a six-month trial, each was convicted on three counts of aggravated
first-degree murder, concluding a legal odyssey that began when
they fled to Canada two days after reporting the deaths.
Because prosecutors agreed
not to seek the death penalty in exchange for their extradition
from Canada, Burns and Rafay, both 28, faced life in prison without
parole - the only other possible sentence in Washington for an
aggravated murder conviction.
Tariq and Sultana Rafay and
their 20-year-old daughter, Basma, were beaten to death with
baseball bats on July 12, 1994, four months after they moved
from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Bellevue.
Prosecutors said Burns wielded
the aluminum bat, while both he and Rafay planned the killings
for money: The two were arrested in Vancouver in August 1995,
the same month that the family estate, valued at about $300,000,
was turned over to Rafay, who had just completed his first year
at Cornell University.
Lawyers for Burns, who is Canadian,
and Rafay insisted throughout the trial that the two merely found
the bodies when they returned from seeing the movie "The
Lion King," and that police had wrongly focused the investigation
on them to the exclusion of other suspects.
But Royal Canadian Mounted
Police planted bugs in the defendants' home and car - tactics
that would have been illegal in the United States but legal in
Canada - and agents posed as gangsters to obtain taped confessions
from the two before arresting them.
Canadian authorities refused
to send them back to Washington state, however, as long as there
was a chance they might face the death penalty. King County Prosecutor
Norm Maleng agreed in 2001 that he would not seek their execution,
and the two were returned.
Related Stories
KING 5 coverage of the Burns-Rafay
case
The case continued to take
bizarre twists, with Burns being assigned new counsel after King
County Jail guards reported seeing him having sexual relations
with his lawyer, Theresa Olson, in a jail interview room.
She lost her job with the public
defense agency she worked for and has been practicing civil law.
Though she previously admitted
having jailhouse sexual contact with Burns, she now denies it.
Burns' new lawyer, Song Richardson,
sought to bar the videotaped confession from trial, citing the
RCMP's tactics. King County Superior Court Judge Charles Mertel
allowed it, on the grounds that if the methods were legal in
Canada they were admissible under international treaty.
During the trial, Richardson
told jurors the undercover officers posed so effectively as gangsters
that they thoroughly frightened Burns - then still in his teens
- into giving a false confession.
The Associated Press contributed
to this report. Online
Convicted
killer says Mounties tricked him
- Sebastian
Burns insists he was outwitted by undercover officers,
-
By JANE ARMSTRONG,
Globe and Mail, Oct 13, 2004
SEATTLE -- On the 11th floor
of the King County Jail, behind scratched plastic that separates
the prisoner's booth from the visitor, convicted killer Sebastian
Burns is in the mood to talk.
He wants to talk about how
he was wrongfully convicted for killing his best friend's family
with a baseball bat. He wants to talk about how he and Atif Rafay,
his partner in crime, were seduced and betrayed by undercover
Mounties.
Smiling and agreeable, the
pale and willowy 29-year-old West Vancouver native is even eager
to share stories about his hitchhiking days as a teenager.
But as Mr. Burns awaits sentencing
next week for the vicious triple murder of Tariq, Sultana and
Basma Rafay, he clams up when asked about the emotional impact
of that slaying.
Asked how his friend felt after
his entire immediate family was slaughtered in their suburban
Seattle home 10 years ago, Mr. Burns's huge blue eyes narrow
in confusion as he grips the telephone receiver.
"I'm not sure what . .
. I don't think it's a major issue here," Mr. Burns said
in an interview with The Globe and Mail, his first with Canadian
media.
On the witness stand at his
trial, Mr. Burns came off as intellectually arrogant and cold.
In person, his formal manner loosens as he attempts to explain
his personality. Journalists commonly mistake his formality for
haughtiness, he said with a grin. Mr. Burns is most animated
when he talks about himself.
In reality, Mr. Burns said,
he was a precocious, though naive, teenager who was hopelessly
outmatched a decade ago when two sophisticated Mounties launched
an elaborate undercover operation nine months after the Rafays
were killed.
Those Mounties eventually extracted
confessions from the pair on videotape. But Mr. Burns, who has
always maintained his innocence, said he and Mr. Rafay were set
up.
Dressed in a scarlet prison
jumpsuit and running his fingers through his dark blond hair,
Mr. Burns talked quickly, sometimes stumbling over words as he
attempted to make his points in the allotted 90-minute interview.
"Forgive me if I'm not
making sense," he said more than once. "I have so much
to get through."
Mr. Burns was in a rush because
time is running out on the case. Last May, he and Mr. Rafay were
convicted of killing the Rafay family, and both young men face
life sentences with no chance of parole.
The Rafays were killed in July,
1994, in their Bellevue, Wash., home. The family had just moved
there from Vancouver, where they had raised their family. Mr.
Rafay and Mr. Burns were visiting from Canada. A few days after
the murders, they boarded a Greyhound bus for B.C.
Mr. Burns, who police say wielded
the bat on the Rafays while Atif staged a phony break-in, doesn't
want to talk about the prospect of a life in prison. His sole
focus now is to persuade the judge to grant him a new trial,
arguing that his lawyers bungled his case.
That request will be made at
the sentencing hearing next Friday and could last a couple of
days.
It's a last-ditch effort that
even his new lawyer admits is a long shot. "The legal standard
is tough," said Bill Jacquette, a public defender assigned
to the case.
Still, Mr. Burns persists.
There's even a group of supporters -- among them a high-school
friend and his sister -- who launched a website that argues the
two Canadians were wrongly convicted.
They say police in Bellevue
fumbled the investigation and ignored crucial evidence that pointed
to enemies Mr. Rafay had in the Muslim community. Instead, police
zeroed in on the two young Canadians and persuaded Mounties in
Canada to launch an undercover sting to entrap the pair.
It's a theory the 12-member
jury did not buy. Mr. Burns said that's because his lawyer did
not let him explain the context for the confessions.
Mr. Burns said his fate was
sealed the minute he first spoke to the long-haired undercover
Mountie who was pretending to be locked out of his car in a West
Vancouver parking lot. To Mr. Burns, the man, who swore a blue
streak and dropped names in the business world, was the epitome
of cool.
At this part of the interview,
Mr. Burns embarked on a tangent about how he enjoyed striking
up conversations with strangers, a habit he picked up when he
hitchhiked as a teenager.
"There was a social element
I enjoyed," he said, smiling again. "It was a satisfying
and varied experience to chat about your life with someone who
you've just met."
The undercover officer intrigued
Mr. Burns. "He reminded me of a cross between an NHL player
and a café owner," he said.
Mr. Burns offered the man a
ride and was flattered when he took an immediate and intense
interest in him.
When the Mountie asked if he
wanted to go for a beer, Mr. Burns agreed. Two pints turned into
six, and soon Mr. Burns was "blowing smoke" to impress
the man.
It wasn't long before Mr. Burns
and Mr. Rafay were in deep over their heads, boasting of the
crimes they didn't commit.
That was the argument both
unsuccessfully advanced at their Seattle trial.
Mr. Burns said he hopes the
website generates public anger at the RCMP methods and rekindles
interest in the case.
If the judge refuses to grant
him a new trial?
"I'll appeal."
© 2004 Bell Globemedia
Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
New lawyers appointed
for Rafay and Burns
Saturday, August 7, 2004,
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF AND NEWS SERVICES
A judge appointed new attorneys
yesterday for Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns, who are both maintaining
that their attorneys were ineffective in the triple-murder trial
that left them convicted of killing Rafay's family in 1994.
In a handwritten motion for
a new trial, Rafay wrote that his attorneys' "ineffective
assistance" included "the effective denial of the right
to testify, failure to offer probative documentary evidence and
prejudicial misconduct."
Burns, who testified in the
six-month trial, contends only that his attorneys were ineffective
"relating to his testimony at trial."
King County Superior Court
Judge Charles Mertel appointed veteran defense lawyer Kathryn
Ross to investigate Rafay's claims and attorney William Jaquette,
who heads the Snohomish County public defender's office, to help
Burns.
A jury found both men guilty
in May of killing Rafay's parents, Tariq and Sultana, and his
autistic sister, Basma, in July 1994. The three, who had recently
moved from Canada, were found beaten and bludgeoned in their
Bellevue home.
Rafay and Burns face a mandatory
life sentence on three counts of aggravated murder. They are
expected to be sentenced later this year.
© 1998-2004 Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
- Rafay, Burns are convicted
of murder
- Jury finds them guilty
of beating Bellevue family to death in 1994
Thursday, May 27, 2004,
By TRACY JOHNSON AND HECTOR CASTRO, SEATTLE
POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS
The guilty verdicts appeared
to stun Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns, leaving them facing life
behind bars, but jurors said evidence that the two young men
killed Rafay's family nearly 10 years ago was simply overwhelming.
Burns searched the jurors'
faces as their decision was read yesterday, his mouth hanging
open slightly as he slowly shook his head. Rafay stared ahead
silently.
The King County Superior Court
jury took 3 1/2 days to find the 28-year-old men guilty in the
bludgeoning deaths of Rafay's parents, Tariq and Sultana, and
his developmentally disabled sister, Basma, in their Bellevue
home.
One juror said a difficult
decision to send two young men to prison was made easier by the
fact that "three people died -- three innocent people don't
get to live the rest of their lives."
Another said, "It was
clear to us that the evidence was overwhelming."
As they spoke about the slain
family, some jurors cried.
Their decision closes a tangled
murder case that's been unresolved -- through years of extradition
battles and legal wrangling about undercover police work -- since
the three were found slain early July 13, 1994.
Last night, Tariq Rafay's brother,
Tahir, reached in Ontario, said he was somewhat relieved the
case was over but "had left it to God almighty and the justice
system."
"It's a verdict that's
been coming for a very long time," King County deputy prosecutor
James Konat said yesterday.
"Justice was served,"
said Bellevue police detective Bob Thompson, "and the truth
came out."
Judge Charles Mertel said the
six-month trial was certainly among the longest criminal trials
in King County history.
One of Burns' attorneys, Song
Richardson, said only that she was disappointed with the outcome.
She and colleague Jeff Robinson left the courtroom quickly with
Burns' parents and sister, who were apparently visiting from
Canada.
Burns may have known what was
coming, though that did not appear to lessen the blow. As the
jurors filed into the courtroom to announce their decision, he
looked at their weary faces and told his family quietly, "It's
not looking too good."
Rafay's attorney, Veronica
Freitas, said he was "very disappointed, but I think he's
hopeful that we can pursue some of the issues on appeal."
Among them, she said, was an
elaborate undercover police investigation in Canada that used
techniques that aren't generally legal in the United States,
such as bugging the defendants' home and phones.
A sentencing date has not been
set, but both men face life in prison with no possibility of
release. Three years ago, King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng
promised that he would not seek the death penalty against the
pair, both Canadian citizens, so that the Canadian government
would finally allow them to be extradited.
Jurors convicted each man of
three counts of aggravated murder, finding the crimes were motivated
by money -- allegedly estate proceeds worth more than $500,000
-- and that they were "part of a common scheme or plan"
under state law.
Prosecutors contended the men,
who were 18 at the time, arrogantly believed they could outsmart
police with a "perfect murder" and a carefully orchestrated
alibi.
Burns and Rafay, who'd just
completed his freshman year at Cornell University, had been spending
the week with Rafay's family.
During the past few months,
jurors saw the men discuss the slayings on videotape as part
of a 1995 undercover operation by the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police.
In the footage, Rafay said
he "just didn't have the nerve" to help Burns bludgeon
his family with a baseball bat, so he stood around, then "yanked
out a VCR" in an effort to make the crime look like a robbery.
Burns said killing his best
friend's family was "more nerve-wracking than we expected"
but left him "a lot happier than if it didn't happen."
Both men laughed as Burns recounted
that Rafay's sister "was standing up and walking around"
as he was attacking her.
It was her death that seemed
to hit jurors the hardest. The 20-year- old autistic woman had
tried desperately to fight off her attacker and was still moaning
in her bedroom when police arrived. She survived just a few hours
longer than her parents.
Yesterday, one juror said he
just wanted people to know that "Basma got her justice."
He began to cry. So did three
other jurors.
Deputy prosecutor Roger Davidheiser
said the Canadian police investigation, which had officers posing
as high-rolling criminals to befriend Burns, was crucial to the
case against Rafay and Burns.
Without their confessions,
he said, "it would not have been the same case at all. They
would have gotten away with murder."
Attorneys for Rafay and Burns
have argued all along that the pair were coerced into giving
false confessions, afraid they'd be arrested or even killed if
they didn't tell the undercover officers what they wanted to
hear.
But jurors, who watched and
listened to the secretly recorded conversations, didn't believe
that. "Not once did Burns or Rafay look scared or afraid
to me," one juror said.
Jurors -- who spoke to reporters
and lawyers in the courtroom without giving their names -- said
they drew a timeline to get past defense attorneys' claims that
the slayings happened while Rafay and Burns were seen elsewhere.
The murders rattled Bellevue's
upscale Somerset neighborhood and the Muslim community in Vancouver,
B.C., where the Rafay family had lived for years.
Tariq Rafay, 56, was regarded
as an extremely intelligent man, a devout Muslim who wrote poetry.
He held a doctorate in engineering and had moved from Vancouver
to the Seattle area in late 1993 to work at Alpha Engineering.
Sultana Rafay, also 56, held
a master's degree in nutrition from Colorado State University,
where she and her future husband had met more than two decades
before.
By all accounts, her main devotion
was to caring for their daughter, Basma, who hadn't spoken a
discernible word since she was about 5.
Yesterday, prosecutors said
the family finally got its justice, though it wasn't a happy
day for anyone.
"There's really no celebrating
a case like this," Davidheiser said. "A family has
been wiped out."
PATH TO THE
VERDICT
July 13, 1994: Tariq Rafay,
his wife, Sultana, and their daughter, Basma, are found beaten
to death in Bellevue.
July 31, 1995:
King County prosecutors charge Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns
with aggravated murder; they're arrested in Canada, where they
are citizens.
July 12, 1996: A Canadian justice minister orders
Rafay and Burns extradited.
June 30, 1997:
British Columbia Court of Appeals rules the pair can't be extradited
if they face the death penalty.
Feb. 15, 2001:
The Supreme Court of Canada agrees, essentially forcing King
County Prosecutor Norm Maleng to assure he won't seek execution.
Nov. 24, 2003: Trial begins.
Yesterday: Jury finds both men guilty.
P-I reporter Tracy Johnson
can be reached at 206-467-5942 or tracyjohnson@seattlepi.com
© 1998-2004 Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
Full scrapbook of trial reports
page one | page two
|
