The murder of a mother and her two children, victims of a violent ex-husband in 2019, will be the subject of a public inquiry, the Coroner's Office announced on Wednesday.

• Read also: Domestic violence: the system failed to protect this family

Despite extensive reports produced by coroner Alain Manseau, the coroner's office deemed it necessary to hold such an inquest.

"New facts" revealed in the last few days justify the opening "in order to establish the circumstances of the [...] deaths with the greatest possible accuracy", writes the organization in a press release.

The Journal reported Wednesday that the system failed to protect the 42-year-old wife of her ex, who simply had to flout court orders to murder her and her children.

Dahia Khellaf was strangled to death by Nabil Yssaad, her “aggressive, jealous and narcissistic” husband from whom she wanted to divorce, writes Me Manseau.

The pajama-clad bodies of 2-year-old Aksil and 4-year-old Adam were found next to him, arranged “theatrically” in the master bedroom of their Montreal home.

Nabil Yssaad killed himself after this triple murder, a suicide which will also be examined during the public inquiry.

Five days before the tragedy, the 46-year-old man had lost custody of his children. He had been acquitted of death threats and armed assault on his ex the same day.

Denouncing a "society that failed to protect this woman and her family", coroner Alain Manseau made about thirty recommendations aimed at 10 different organizations.

“I understand the coroner for hitting everywhere. It's amazing what I read in this case, "says retired judge Nicole Gibeault.

"Unfounded", says the DPCP

Targeted by several of these recommendations, the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP) argued in a press release published before the announcement of the public inquiry that the coroner's conclusions were based on "factual and legal errors".

"I am concerned to read in these reports findings [...] with such serious consequences and which appear to me with all due respect to be unfounded", wrote the director of the DPCP Patrick Michel in a letter to the chief coroner.

– With Valerie Gonthier