Rafay, Burns plead not guilty to three slayings
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After six years at the center of an international extradition dispute, Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns appeared in King County Superior Court yesterday and pleaded not guilty to killing Rafay's family in 1994.
First Burns, then Rafay, stood stone-faced before Judge Michael Spearman. The suspects wore red jumpsuits and spoke only to acknowledge their names and the charges against them: three counts each of aggravated-first-degree murder, punishable by life in prison without parole.
Their attorneys, meanwhile, filed motions to dismiss the case on the grounds that their clients' rights to a fair and speedy trial had been violated.
Rafay and Burns, now 25, have been incarcerated in Canada, awaiting trial since 1995.
Canada, which opposes the death penalty, refused to extradite the fugitives to face possible capital punishment. After the Supreme Court of Canada reaffirmed the decision in February, King County prosecutors relented and gave assurances they wouldn't seek it.
"The prosecutor has an obligation to bring someone to arraignment in a timely fashion," said Neil Fox, one of Burns' two attorneys. For the past several years, Fox contends, there "was no legal impediment for extradition but for the U.S.' refusal to give that assurance."
The filing is the first of what is expected to be months of pretrial motions and hearings. One defense lawyer says the case could take a year to reach a jury.
Until then, deputy prosecutors and defense lawyers promise to shed light on one of the more interesting questions in this murder case:
Who are these two young defendants, who were teenagers when the killings occurred?
Prosecutors Jeffrey Baird and James Konat will paint the portrait of Rafay and Burns as calculating, callous young men who plotted the deaths of Rafay's father, Tariq; mother, Sultana; and developmentally disabled sister, Basma.
They say that on July 12, 1994, Rafay watched as Burns, wearing only underwear to avoid blood spatters, beat the victims with an aluminum bat in their Bellevue home. The apparent motive: $350,000 from the family's real-estate holdings and life-insurance policies.
Disinterested after the deaths, prosecutors say, Rafay and Burns fled on a bus to Canada, where they had met at secondary school, while extended family members gathered in Bellevue for the funeral. The two settled into a rundown home in Vancouver, sleeping in and partying late.
Statements they made in Canada to an undercover officer led to their arrest.
These images contrast with pictures now offered by the defense attorneys and the suspects' friends, who say the two were smart, talented teenagers who had no reason to risk their futures.
Burns was often misjudged because of his aloof demeanor, the friends say, but was well-read, loyal, straightforward and honest. He played the cello with the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra and led a squadron in the Royal Canadian Air Cadets, a program equivalent to ROTC.
Rafay was honored as one of the top 10 scholars in Canada during his senior year in high school, an award that led to a full scholarship to Cornell University.
"They wanted to do some things with their lives," said Dan Isaacs, a friend who knew Rafay and Burns in Vancouver and whose younger sister dated Burns for a year. "Why would they give that up? Atif's scholarship is worth about what police say they killed for. That doesn't make any sense."
Rafay and Burns were raised in an upscale Vancouver suburb and didn't become good friends until high school, when both enrolled in the rigorous International Baccalaureate program at West Vancouver Secondary School.
By most accounts, the two were above-average, well-rounded students, fond of movies, music, books and philosophical discussions and debates. Some say the two were drawn together because of their mutual admiration for the German philosopher Frederich Nietzsche.
Some acquaintances interpreted their intellectualism as a kind of superiority complex.
"Striding across his realm like a Titan," Burns wrote about himself in his high-school yearbook. "Sebastian's furious contempt for the petty strictures of the plebeians about him could not be contained by the all-too-small hallways."
Wrote Rafay: "Hearing the cries of the plebs below, Atif descended through the clouds. Casting aside the hollow illusions of his peers, he gazed bemusedly at the petty struggles of those around him and began to laugh."
Rafay's family thinks Atif was dependent on Burns. Arif Rafay, Atif's uncle who lives in a Toronto suburb, recalls a short visit from Rafay and Burns during the summer of 1993:
"If I asked Atif a question, he would always look at Sebastian before answering," Arif Rafay said. "Sebastian was very much in control. He was the person who did everything. He made Atif a partner."
The past six years have been very difficult for Burns, his lawyers said. The suspects spent their time in low-security pretrial centers in the Vancouver area; Canada separates those awaiting trial from those who have been convicted.
Burns' friend Isaacs has talked to him regularly during the interim.
"He's depressed," Isaacs said. "Can you imagine? It's been brutal for him. He was 18, and then all of a sudden, he's in prison. His main focus in life now is to stay alive."
Michael Ko can be reached at 206- 515-5653 or mko@seattletimes.com.