Parents Guilty of Shafilea murder

I hope they rot!
http://www.itv.com/news/2012-08-03/shafilea-ahmed-verdict/

Another report - I can't get the video on the first one to play.

http://news.sky.com/story/968526/shafileas-parents-found-guilty-of-murder

I didn't know anything about the father's first marriage and how apparently he bowed to parental pressure to marry someone who was in their eyes more suitable.

I can't help wondering though about the validity of the testament of the sister who waited seven years before telling what she'd seen and I'd like to know more about the burglary in which she was involved.

While I do think that the parents are the most likely suspects, there is an element of doubt in my mind.

A bit more background here:


http://www.channel4.com/news/invited-in-for-tea-by-shafileas-murderers

Not Born Yesterday wrote:Another report - I can't get the video on the first one to play.

http://news.sky.com/story/968526/shafileas-parents-found-guilty-of-murder

I didn't know anything about the father's first marriage and how apparently he bowed to parental pressure to marry someone who was in their eyes more suitable.

I can't help wondering though about the validity of the testament of the sister who waited seven years before telling what she'd seen and I'd like to know more about the burglary in which she was involved.

While I do think that the parents are the most likely suspects, there is an element of doubt in my mind.

I could imagine why the sister waited seven years. We have a large Sikh community in my town and they are very close-knit. A person who steps outside of the rules of the community is an outcast: they no longer belong. I think that must be very difficult, especially for young people who have been born in the UK. They live between 2 cultures and can end up not feeling as though they belong to either. Someone like the sister who gave evidence against her parents would possibly make herself an outcast from the Sikh community, which holds strongly to the principle of parents being obeyed, parents making the decisions about the children's lives.

It may be that the sister needed to feel that she was old enough and secure enough in her chosen way of life to be independent and to act outside of the Sikh community's tight rules of keeping certain actions within the community.

Shafilea's mother did her best to save her own skin when she changed her story and said that her husband had been responsible. This told me that they were both guilty.

I can also understand why one sister would give contradictory evidence, in support of her parents. She has to live within the Sikh community. It is difficult for a young Sikh woman to live outside of that community and young Sikh women have been known to disappear off the streets and turn up in India. There is a right wing Sikh organisation which will do this and they aggressively uphold the values of the Sikh religion and community. I know about this because they threatened to burn my house down when I helped a few young Sikh women to go to university rather than agree to forced marriages.

Surely the Ahmed family are Muslims?

It is a shock to hear what Sikh exremists are capable of - the rest of their community should drive them out.

Not Born Yesterday wrote:Surely the Ahmed family are Muslims?

It is a shock to hear what Sikh exremists are capable of - the rest of their community should drive them out.

Oh dear! You're right! Ahmed is a Muslim name. I think everything I have said about living within a Sikh community applies to the Muslim community. It is difficult for young people of either Sikh or Muslim to step outside of the rules. In Manchester, a Muslim friend of mine was disowned by her family because they were Sunni and her chosen (bad in itself!) husband was Shia. When the marriage went wrong because of violence, they told her they would have nothing to do with her because of her choice.

The attitude "you've made your bed and now you must lie on it" was prevalent in my youth many moons ago - go against your parents and they will have nothing more to do with you ever; it is sad to see that it still prevails today for many youngsters.

Not Born Yesterday wrote:The attitude "you've made your bed and now you must lie on it" was prevalent in my youth many moons ago - go against your parents and they will have nothing more to do with you ever; it is sad to see that it still prevails today for many youngsters.

I think that attitude is more prevalent in certain immigrant communities, but also exists generally, to some extent, in all communities, which I find sad.

Shafilea's parents will both serve at least 25 years. I think that is an appropriate sentence for a planned murder of their daughter, who was killed simply because of how she wanted to live her life.

Very telling the difference between how Mrs Ahmed was with the journalist - sweet and lovely - and how she was heard to be on the tapes from her 'bugged,' kitchen.

Yes Anna, that's what I thought. The judge has commented 'a truly horrifying feature...is that you killed Shafilea in the presence of your other four children.'

Think of the fear they all had to live through.

chrissie wrote:A bit more background here:


http://www.channel4.com/news/invited-in-for-tea-by-shafileas-murderers

Thanks chrissie. A very important article.

Friday 03 August 2012

As a court finds Shafilea Ahmed's parents guilty of her murder, Channel 4 News correspondent Darshna Soni recalls being invited into their family home - where no trace of Shafilea was on view.

"Come in, come in. Join us for dinner." Mrs Ahmed led me into the kitchen and sat me down at the table. A softly-spoken woman, with a shy smile, she made me a cup of tea.

And yet, this was the kitchen where it was alleged that Farzana Ahmed and her husband Iftikhar [pictured above] had murdered one of their own daughters.

I first came to know the family in 2003, not long after Shafilea went missing. Theirs was a fascinating story that attracted huge headlines. They were a seemingly ordinary couple that lived in suburban Warrington with their four children, all of whom attended local schools. And yet they were accused of an extraordinary crime.

Their fifth child, Shafilea, had disappeared in September and the couple had been publically accused of killing her. They always denied any involvement and initially, their children supported them. But over the years, I would get a glimpse of the strain this put on the family, especially on Shafilea's sisters as they grew up.

'A wife doesn't question her husband'

Mrs Ahmed was always very welcoming. She would joke that I had been standing outside their home with my camera crew, reporting the latest developments on their story, and looked like I needed a cup of tea. She was a housewife and told the jury that she was very traditional: "In our culture, a wife doesn't question her husband."

And yet this image is very different to the way in which Mrs Ahmed was caught behaving on surveillance recordings by the police. Officers had inserted a bug into the kitchen and I have listened to some of the tapes. Mrs Ahmed can be heard shouting and screaming at her husband and their children.

She uses harsh language, even calling one daughter a "slut". She also gives them instructions about never telling anyone about "what happened," threatening that if they did, there would be trouble: "For all your lives, we will be stuck in real trouble, remember that."

The girls, and their brother Junyad, can be heard on the tape trying to calm their mother down. Whenever I met them, they were always very polite and well behaved. They would often be watching TV as I talked to their parents. "You can interview any of them, any time,” Mr Ahmed would say. “They’ll all tell you we had nothing to do with it."

They would never talk explicitly about "it" - about what had happened to Shafilea. There was no trace of her in the house. No photographs or mementos. Mr Ahmed would never speak of her by name, only ever referring to her as "the daughter."

No hint of children's personalities

Shafilea had shared a bedroom with her three sisters. Mr Ahmed once let me and my cameraman in to film it. "We've got nothing to hide," he said.

The room was immaculate: two large beds perfectly made, no clothes lying around, nor any personal items belonging to any of the children.

In fact, the entire house was pristine; not a single stray toy, not a cushion out of place nor a schoolbook left lying around. Nothing to suggest children lived there, no hint of any of their personalities.

In his police interviews, Mr Ahmed was asked about this. An officer tried to get Mr Ahmed to describe each of his children individually, saying: "We know they did well at school we don't know anything personal about them." Mr Ahmed replied: "They're all normal… there's nothing different about any of them." The officer tried several times, asking Mr Ahmed which child he'd describe as cheeky, which one as shy and so on. Mr Ahmed could not name any individual traits, saying: "I'd not noticed anything like that…they're all the same."

Alesha: 'She's fallen in with a bad crowd'

But over the years, the children would try to assert their own personalities outside of the home. The eldest, Rukesh, changed her name by deed poll to Alesha. "She's fallen in with a bad crowd," Mr and Mrs Ahmed told me on one occasion. Alesha had started to rebel, had left home for university and started taking drugs. She would eventually tell the police that for years, she had been trying to escape a terrible secret: that she had witnessed her mother and father kill her sister Shafilea. Without Alesha's evidence, the prosecution would never have been brought.

Alesha only came forward after a bizarre incident at the family home. Mrs Ahmed told me she had been at home one night with the children, including Alesha, when three men broke in, tied them up and robbed them. They stole jewellery and £30,000 in cash. It turned out that Alesha had orchestrated the robbery.

Her parents insisted on reporting her to the police for her role; ironically, if they hadn't they may never have been charged with Shafilea's death, for it was only when Alesha was arrested about the robbery that she told officers the story of her sister's death.

http://www.channel4.com/news/invited-in-for-tea-by-shafileas-murderers

These are the sentencing remarks:
https://t.co/M5nPLFprwww.crimeline.info

@crimelinelaw

R v Iftikhar Ahmed and Farzana Ahmed

NOTE: there is an s.39 Order restricting reporting details relating to the youngest child, identified in these remarks as X.

The jury has found you both guilty of the murder of your daughter Shafilea. She was 17 years of age when you killed her. What was it that brought you two – her parents, the people who had given her life – to the point of killing her?

You, Iftikhar Ahmed, came to the United Kingdom when you were 10 years of age and you are fully familiar with western culture. Indeed, you married a Danish woman and had a son by her and lived, for some time, in Denmark. Then, in 1985, you returned to Pakistan and, while you were there, you married Farzana Ahmed, your first cousin. She lived in your home village in rural Pakistan. She had no experience of western culture but in 1986 you both came to England and settled here. You have lived here for the last 25 years. When you arrived here you, Farzana Ahmed, were pregnant with Shafilea. In due course, you had four other children, three daughters, Alesha, Mevish and X and a son, Junyad.

You chose to bring up your family in Warrington but, although you lived in Warrington, your social and cultural attitudes were those of rural Pakistan and it was those which you imposed upon your children.

Shafilea was a determined, able and ambitious girl who wanted to live a life which was normal in the country and in the town in which you had chosen to live and bring up your children. However, you could not tolerate the life that Shafilea wanted to live. You wanted your family to live in Pakistan in Warrington. Although she went to local schools, you objected to her socialising with girls from what has been referred to as “the white community”. You objected to her wearing western clothes and you objected to her having contact with boys.

She was being squeezed between two cultures, the culture and way of life that she saw around her and wanted to embrace and the culture and way of life you wanted to impose upon her. A desire that she understood and appreciated the cultural heritage from which she came is perfectly understandable but an expectation that she live in a sealed cultural environment separate from the culture of the country in which she lived was unrealistic, destructive and cruel. The conflict between you and her increased in the last year of her life and you tried to impose your cultural values and attitudes on her by intimidation, bullying and the use of physical violence. She tried to escape and she was determined to do so because she knew what lay in store for her at your hands – being taken to Pakistan to be “sorted out” i.e. having her westernised ideas removed – and to be married off.

She ran away in February 2003 but you recaptured her, dragged her off the street and forced her into your car and, a week later, she was drugged and taken to Pakistan. I have no doubt that your intention was that she should remain in Pakistan and be married there. There came a time in Pakistan when she realised what her immediate future was going to be; she self-harmed by drinking bleach in order to frustrate your plans. She seriously injured herself and her condition deteriorated to such an extent after she had been left in Pakistan that she was no longer wanted as a bride. She was brought back to the United Kingdom where she received prolonged hospital treatment. On her discharge from hospital, even in her weakened condition, she continued to want freedom and to live the life she wanted for herself.

On the evening of 11th September 2003, you berated her for her behaviour and, in temper and frustration, you two suffocated her. It was you, Farzana Ahmed, who said to your husband “finish it here”. While I accept that there was no pre-existing plan to kill Shafilea that night, that remark together with the evidence relating to whether or not Shafilea survived the drinking of bleach drives me to the conclusion that you two had previously discussed the way that you might ultimately resolve the problem which Shafilea presented for you.

Your problem was that, in what you referred to as your “community”, Shafilea’s conduct was bringing shame upon you and your concern about being shamed in your community was greater than your love of you child. In order to rid yourselves of that problem, you killed Shafilea by suffocating her in the presence of your other four children.

I express no concluded view on whether Junyad played any part in the killing of his sister but I have no doubt that, as the result of the distorted upbringing and values to which you subjected him, he told his surviving sisters, within minutes of them seeing Shafilea murdered by you, that Shafilea deserved it. Thereafter, you got rid of her body by dumping it or having it dumped in undergrowth on a riverbank in Cumbria and you told your children what to tell anybody who asked about the disappearance of Shafilea.

You killed one daughter, but you have blighted the lives of your remaining children. Alesha escaped but she is unlikely to be able to avoid the legacy of her upbringing. Mevish, after a period of trying to live independently, was recaptured and brought home and has since become compliant with your wishes. She came to court and was placed in the sad position of having to deny her own words in order to try to help the parents whom she, and no doubt all your surviving children, still care for. X was seven when she saw Shafilea killed and it is difficult to say what effect that has had upon her or will have upon her in the future. However, there is no difficulty in seeing the life which would have lain ahead of her, had she returned to live with you. That future is graphically set out in the Social Services notes of contact sessions between you and her in which you are recorded making clear your views of X’s attitudes and what you expected in the future.

As to Junyad, he remains supportive, especially of you Iftikhar Ahmed. Whether that is simply out of filial affection or the result of the warped values you instilled in him, is impossible to tell.

There is only one sentence that I can impose upon you and that is a sentence of imprisonment for life.

However, I have to set the minimum period that you must spend in custody before you can be considered for parole. That has to be done in accordance with the sentencing regime which applied at the time you murdered Shafilea, that is, that which applied after 31st May 2002 and before 18th December 2003.

My first task is to identify the starting point for setting the minimum term. In my judgment, your culpability can, because of the circumstances of the murder, properly be described as exceptionally high and, therefore, I take the higher starting point.

I then have to consider the aggravating and mitigating features of the case to adjust that starting point appropriately ensuring, as I do, that the features which led me to adopt the higher starting point, are not considered again as aggravating features, in a way which would unfairly inflate the minimum term I set.

The first point to note is, of course, that your intention was to kill Shafilea. That is not an aggravating feature but it means that there can be no mitigation which a lesser intent would attract.

Mitigating Features

I accept, subject to what I have said, that there was no pre-existing plan to kill Shafilea that night.

The only other mitigating feature I can identify is the absence of previous convictions and that, while not wholly irrelevant, can in the circumstances of this case, have but little influence on the term I have to set.

Aggravating Features

I identify the following aggravating features in this case:

1. You were the people to whom Shafilea should have been able to look for protection and kindness. Your treatment of her and your killing her was as fundamental a breach of trust as can be imagined.

2. You acted together as a team to kill her.

3. In the year before you killed Shafilea, you subjected her to repeated violence; you abducted her from the street on 10th February, you drugged her to take her to Pakistan and you tried to arrange a marriage for her which was against her will.

4. Shafilea was in a vulnerable condition when you killed her. She was still weak from the effects of the ingestion of bleach which she had taken to try to avoid what you had planned for her in Pakistan.

5. A truly horrifying feature of this case is that you killed Shafilea in the presence of your other four children.

6. The killing was motivated by the cultural issues to which I have already referred.

7. After the killing, you concealed her body.

8. After the killing, not only did you lie and mislead people to cover up what you did, including lying on oath before the Coroner, but you also made your surviving children put forward an account which was intended to hide what you had done.

I have considered the impact of Paragraph 10 of Schedule 22 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

There is no basis upon which I should differentiate between you. The minimum term which in my judgment adequately reflects the seriousness of this case in respect of each of you, is 25 years.

You will not be eligible to be considered for parole until you have served those 25 years in prison. When you have done so, you will not be released automatically. You will be released only when the Parole Board is satisfied that you no longer present a danger.

The sentence, therefore, in respect of each of you is life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years from which will be deducted the number of days which you have served in custody during this case. In the case of each of you, I am told that you have been in custody for 66 days. If that figure proves inaccurate, it will be amended administratively.

If they didnt like the way their daughter was becoming 'Westernised' then why did they come to this country.Presumably to get all the 'Westernised' benefits.
I would like to see them get sent 'home' and stoned would be appropriate.

Lioned wrote:If they didnt like the way their daughter was becoming 'Westernised' then why did they come to this country.Presumably to get all the 'Westernised' benefits.
I would like to see them get sent 'home' and stoned would be appropriate.

You're right, Lioned. Such people want all the benefits of living in a society where they will get child benefits and access to a national health system. They want the good schools and free education for all children. They also want to carry on living as though they are still in a tribal society in Pakistan and they bring those values with them. What they don't want is their daughters taking advantage of the education and opportunities available to them, to choose their own path in life, choose how they dress, where they live and whom they marry. They want their children, male and female, to live as they try to, within the rules of a tribal society that didn't even meet their needs, or they'd still be living in Pakistan.

And the sad thing is, children of 6 and 7 are still being forced to live that way. Not allowed to mix with their school friends outside of school etc.
How many more 'honour' killings will there be?

wjk wrote:And the sad thing is, children of 6 and 7 are still being forced to live that way. Not allowed to mix with their school friends outside of school etc.
How many more 'honour' killings will there be?

I think that calling these murders 'honour killings,' shows how shabby and trivial the reasons behind the murders are. They kill their women, and it's mostly women and girls, for the sake of what others in their community will think of them. That's what is utterly shameful.

There is a lot of pressure on young girls particularly, who want to live a westernised lifestyle and mix
with other cultures in this country, but at home the parents want to continue to live their own way of life and to impose that on the children. There have been a number of cases where a young woman has had to go on the run with her boyfriend and been hunted down by the family and wider family, and cases sadly of where others as in this case have been murdered. It is not just the immediate family that they have to stand up against, often cousins, uncles are involved in trying to control the young person and threaten them and assault their boyfriends if they dont approve of the relationship. They should be allowed to make their own choices and decisions, the parents have no right to impose their life onto the children who are old enough to make their own way in life.