Former postmistress who killed brother loses bid for bail

A FORMER postmistress who killed her brother in a fire failed in a bid yesterday to have time with her family ahead of sentencing for the crime.

Shafquat Saleem, 39, asked to be released on bail before she is dealt with for the offence later this month.

But the judge at her earlier trial, Lord Stewart, refused her application for bail at the High Court in Edinburgh.

The judge said it would be a very unusual case were he to grant such a move in the 
circumstances, especially where there was a background of Saleem leaving the country for a decade.

Saleem was originally charged with murdering her brother Imran, 18, after setting fire to a family flat at Barn Park in the Wester Hailes area of Edinburgh on June 14 , 2001.

But a jury convicted her of a reduced charge of culpable homicide last month following a trial.

She was also found guilty of embezzling £34,000 from a post office in the city’s Raeburn Place in September 2001 and attempting to defeat the ends of justice by leaving the UK that month.

She was detained in 2011 after returning to Britain. She had spent time in Northern Cyprus.

After the fire attack in 2001, most of her family members managed to escape from the property, but Imran did not make it.

She is due to be sentenced on January 23.