Like so many girls of her age, Shafilea Ahmed had ambitions to break away from her parents, go to university and forge a successful career.
But unlike most teenagers in the UK, Shafilea was torn between two cultures. Her parents, an ultra-conservative Pakistani couple who were born in the rural village of Uttam in the Gujrat district, wanted her to marry a cousin in his late 20s, a decade older than their daughter, and become a devoted wife, possibly never to return to the UK.
The Ahmeds' bright and rebellious eldest girl had a desire to wear western clothes like her friends, have boyfriends she chose herself, and be free to hang around with whom she wanted. Tragically for her, the two cultures were on a collision course. In the lead-up to her killing, at 17, she was the victim of extreme violence at her parents' hands as she resisted their attempts to control her.
Shafilea repeatedly refused their calls for an arranged marriage and, in the eyes of her parents, thereby brought shame on the family. Her friendships with other boys meant she was effectively "damaged goods". As a cry for help, she drank bleach in Pakistan – six months before her death on 11 September 2003. Her parents maintained that she had mistaken it for mouthwash. "A stupid and obvious lie," the prosecution retorted.
The violence meted out by her parents escalated in the months before her death and she was frequently held down and beaten by both of them. Her teenage years were punctuated by household chores late at night at the house in Warrington, Cheshire, before she was allowed to begin her schoolwork.
It was an appalling life, but her parents were keen to keep up the appearance of normality and to hide the abuse from the school, social services and police. If awkward questions were asked, the Ahmeds would claim they were victims of racial prejudice.
Ultimately, Shafilea was killed for her resistance. According to her sister Alesha's evidence, her mother Farzana uttered the final command to her husband: "Let's finish it here", and they stuffed a plastic carrier bag into her mouth as she sat on a settee at the family home, blocking her airways and suffocating her to death.
The Story: Shafilea Ahmed
Had she lived, Shafilea would now be qualified as a lawyer and enjoying life in her mid-20s free of her parents' stifling influence.
Shafilea Ahmed was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, in July 1986, when her taxi driver father was still married to a Danish woman, with whom he had a baby son. He married Farzana, his cousin, after bowing to pressure from a relative in Pakistan – ironically his own arranged marriage. The family moved to Warrington, a town with a small but well-established Asian community, soon after her birth.
Until she was 11 and ran away from home for the first time, her life was unremarkable. It was a pattern that she repeated as she grew older and tried to establish an independent life. Inevitably, questions will be asked of the authorities' lack of intervention given what she was telling them over the years – of abuse and plans for a forced marriage in Pakistan. There were other warning signs: in May 2002, Farzana Ahmed and her five children were thrown out of the house by Iftikhar and temporarily housed in a Travelodge. Both parents said they were unable to recall what led to the incident.
When Shafilea went missing for the last time in September 2003, her parents did not report it to the authorities. It was a teacher at Great Sankey high school, Joanne Code, who overheard her younger siblings discussing her disappearance. Police were called in and a search was launched on 18 September – a week later. No effort was made by either parent to contact her by phone, unlike other occasions when she was missing and they had called her repeatedly.
When police asked her father why he hadn't reported her missing, he explained that when he contacted them when Shafilea was missing previously, he was told she was 16 and there was nothing they could do. The officers who were called to the house said he told them she had only taken western clothes and he seemed "disgusted" by this. The officers described her father as "obstructive and he appeared angry by her disappearance and showed no concern".
Tellingly, Iftikhar Ahmed had once told a fellow taxi driver: "I know the Lake District inch by inch. I have toured a lot of times over there. If you kill a man nobody can find the body." There was other evidence of his reputation for having a quick temper. He'd broken a colleague's window and punched him, and was later prosecuted and fined for criminal damage. On another occasion, he roughly grabbed a customer by the necktie when he did not have change for a £10 note to pay his fare.
In the aftermath of Shafilea's disappearance, media appeals were launched by the police who regarded it, initially, as a missing persons inquiry. Coronation Street actor Shobna Gulati read out Shafilea's poems at a police press conference in Manchester. She said she sympathised with the teenager's difficulty in balancing her dreams with her family upbringing. "I think she is definitely looking as though she is trapped between two cultures," she said at the time. "She wants to express something and feels unable to do that."
As a result of the appeals, a Glasgow pharmacy contacted police and CCTV footage was obtained in the belief that it was Shafilea. After watching the tape, her parents said they were "certain" it was her. When a teacher looked at the footage she said it definitely wasn't. By that time, Shafilea was already dead.
Two months after her disappearance, a covert listening device was placed in the family home. Her father was recorded saying that the system in the UK works on proof, and "without proof, even if you sisterfuckers kill 40 people, until it is found, they can't do anything to you". The device also recorded the Ahmeds discussing what would happen if the police found DNA evidence in the car.
Her body was discovered in February 2004. Workmen found her skeletal and decomposed remains by the river Kent in Sedgwick, Cumbria, following a flood. Dog walkers in the area recalled seeing a scruffy white van shortly after the time of her death. A horrible decaying smell had pervaded the area but they assumed it was a decaying animal – not unusual for Cumbria.
Dr Alison Armour, a Home Office pathologist, ruled out natural causes. She said: "In this case, death has occurred elsewhere …The most likely cause of death … would be smothering or strangulation – ligature or manual or an element of both." Part of her skull was missing, but there was no sign of blood on her clothing to indicate a head injury. She was identified by dental records and her clothing.
'A very vile murder'
The road to justice for Shafilea has been a lengthy and complicated one. It has taken many thousands of police hours and an investigation that cost upward of £2m.
In January 2008, an inquest in Kendal, Cumbria, into Shafilea's death recorded a verdict of unlawful killing.
The Cumbria coroner, Ian Smith, concluded that Shafilea had been the subject of "a very vile murder". She had ambitions to live her own life in her own way, he said, to study, to follow a career in the law and do what she wanted to do. "They are just basic human rights and they were denied to her." He said she had been a young woman who was frightened of the consequences of an arranged marriage. Her parents, who were a few feet away, were impassive. "I am quite sure she was torn between her own wish for freedom and her genuine love for her family, particularly for her brothers and sisters. I am sure it was agonising for her to experience."
The Ahmeds were finally charged with her murder in September 2011. The new CPS chief prosecutor for the north-west, Nazir Afzal, told the Guardian that he was not afraid of tackling "honour" crime within Asian communities. He was responsible for the successful prosecution of the Rochdale child sexual exploitation case earlier this year.
Before her killing, there had been many hints of the violence that Shafilea suffered at home. One friend, Sarah Bennett, recalled Shafilea had dyed her hair and put on false nails, but her mother had washed her hair and ripped the nails off "and called her a slut".
At a hearing, a senior homelessness officer, Anne Marie Woods, said Shafilea had told her she had been staying with friends and had nowhere to live, and that she was fleeing an arranged marriage and violence at home that had escalated from the age of 15. One parent would hold her down while the other would hit her. Shafilea handed Woods a note that read: "Over the past few years I have been experiencing domestic violence which has stopped me going to college on more than one occasion. They have also forced me to quit my job – from that I saved up £2,000, which they took out of my bank account. But my fear is that my parents were going to Pakistan to get me married to someone and left there." Woods said Shafilea was a shy and quiet girl, who seemed genuinely frightened of the impending marriage.
During an absence from school 11 months before her death, her teacher Joanne Code phoned and asked Shafilea, who was at home with her father: "I am worried about you, do I need to be worried about you?" Shafilea replied: "Yes." Returning to school several days later, Code noticed faded bruising on Shafilea's neck and a cut lip. Shafilea told her that her mother had held her down while her father beat her. A referral was made to social services.
A social worker visited her at school but did not see any injuries and Shafilea tried to downplay the incident, although she indicated she was to be married in Pakistan. She was adamant she didn't want any social services involvement and the file was closed.
Her friend Melissa Powner, now 25, said Shafilea was friendly but did not have much of a life outside college. In November 2002, another friend, Laura Meadowcraft, found her in a park near the college looking cold and shaken after she had been absent for a week and a half. "She had faded bruises and scratches to the left side of her neck. She said she had been locked in the house and not allowed out."
Her most significant male friend, or boyfriend, was Mushtaq Bagas, from Blackburn, who is now 38. They met at the end of 2002 when Shafilea was with her family in Blackburn. Bagas slipped her a piece of paper with his number on it. She discussed her concerns and fears with him, including the violence she experienced at the hands of her parents, and the fact they were forcing her into a marriage in Pakistan with a cousin, against her will.
Shafilea and Powner persuaded him to help her escape from being taken to Pakistan. Bagas agreed to help and drove to Warrington in the early hours of one morning in January 2003. As he parked his car, Shafilea climbed out of a front lounge window downstairs with a bag of clothes, as the family were often locked in at night by her father. They spent two nights at his brother's house in Blackburn and then went to a B&B, but he denied having a sexual relationship with her and they had "only kissed." Shafilea's parents frequently phoned while she was away, but she refused to speak to them.
The day before her killing, she had sent him a text asking to meet her at college at lunchtime. But he didn't respond as he was preparing for his wedding.
After the 2003 escape that Bagas had helped to engineer, her family reported her disappearance to the authorities. On 3 February, Iftikhar went to school and "was very aggressive and accusatorial", blaming Code and threatening to get her sacked.
While missing from home, Shafilea was walking to school with Powner when they noticed her father's taxi nearby. "She was just petrified and froze – as did I," Powner recalled. "He got her by the arm and just shoved her into the car and told me to get out of the way and keep out of it. She was crying hysterically." Her father was quite calm, but firm and casual about it. She ran to school and told the teachers, who contacted police.
Shafilea was spoken to by police at school independently of her father, but within his line of vision. She told officers she had had problems in the past at home but they were sorted out now and she would return home.
Drinking bleach while on the visit to Pakistan six months before her death in 2003 was Shafilea's most drastic attempt to escape from her parents' grip. By the time she returned in May 2003 she had lost a considerable amount of weight. She struggled to eat and drink and couldn't even swallow saliva.
She was so ill that her father called an ambulance as soon as she arrived home from Pakistan and she was in a Warrington hospital for many weeks. When another patient asked her why she had drunk bleach, Shafilea replied: "You don't know what they did to me there." She said her parents had accepted a rishta [a formal offer of marriage] from her cousin, adding: "I don't even like the guy." She also claimed they'd taken her passport.
An Asian nurse at the hospital was warned by Iftikhar to tell the white nurses not to give information about his daughter to anyone other than her parents. She described the Ahmeds as "a loveless family" and the children were too frightened to speak.
The night of the killing
The final, fatal assault was precipitated by an argument over the clothing Shafilea was wearing – a T-shirt, hooded cardigan and tight-fitting trousers. The argument started when Farzana picked up her daughter from her part-time call centre job and continued at home. As with previous rows with her parents, it led to violence, but this time her father killed her.
Midway through the murder trial, there was an unexpected twist. Shafilea's mother dramatically changed her account of events in a new statement she issued to the court. She had originally claimed she knew nothing of the killing, but she now pinned all the blame on her husband for a single, violent assault on the day their daughter went missing.
On that evening, Farzana Ahmed claimed, she tried to intervene but was punched by her husband. She maintained that she thought Shafilea was safe and claimed her husband told her never to ask questions about it again "if you care for your dear life and that of your children". At that point, the couple were remanded in custody – until then, they had gone home to Warrington, Cheshire, every day at the end of proceedings. Questioned about his wife's version of events, Iftikhar Ahmed maintained that he loved his wife "to bits", no matter what she had said. Her version of events wasn't the truth, he said, and he denied ever harming his daughter.
The police breakthrough in the case came after nine years when a younger sister, Alesha, now 24, organised an armed robbery at her parents' home. During police interviews, she disclosed that she watched her parents hold down and murder her sister. It was the evidence the police needed.
Alesha Ahmed became a key prosecution witness and told the court of the final, fatal assault. In her detailed account, she recalled how her sister's eyes were wide in shock and she was kicking her legs as she struggled to breathe. Alesha was frozen to the spot in horror as she watched Shafilea's legs stop kicking. She ran to her bedroom and later, from a window, saw her father carry her sister's body wrapped in binbags into his car before driving off. Crucially, before this she observed her mother in the kitchen sorting out flowery patterned sheets, binbags and rolls of tape.
Perhaps one of the most appalling elements of Shafilea Ahmed's murder was that, according to Alesha's testimony, the other children were present when their parents killed her – the youngest was seven at the time. They were told to tell anyone who asked that she had run away. It was a dreadful secret that bubbled to the surface in the Ahmed family as the years passed.
Alesha told friends about the killing, but later retracted her comments and returned home, back to silence and denial. In a sign of her divided loyalties, she supported her parents' account in police interviews as a young teenager shortly after the killing. She denied that her parents had harmed Shafilea and insisted that her sister had run away.
But when she gave evidence against her family at the trial, the austere wood-panelled and porticoed court was silent as she sobbed behind a burgundy velvet screen. A few feet away in the well of the dock, Farzana wept. At the back of the room, her youngest sister cried. Only her father stared ahead, his face devoid of emotion.
Cheshire police have very deliberately not referred to Shafilea's murder as an "honour" killing – it is not a term they recognise. Investigators say the term could be used as some form of mitigation to explain to a jury that someone was protecting their honour. Shafilea was simply a victim of murder. At last she has justice.
Parents sentenced to 25-years after being found guilty of her 'honour' killing
Iftikhar Ahmed, and his wife Farzana, were jailed for life for a minimum of 25 year for the murder of tragic Shafilea, 17. The court heard Shafilea was beaten and suffocated by having a plastic bag thrust into her mouth after she defied her Pakistani Muslim parents by rejecting an arranged marriage, wearing western clothes and chatting to boys.
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