Father denies murdering teenage daughter ‘for being too western’

A FATHER has denied murdering his daughter and claimed that the investigation into her disappearance and death had “totally destroyed” his family.

Iftikhar Ahmed, 52, and his wife Farzana, 49, from Warrington, Cheshire, are charged with murdering their 17-year-old daughter Shafilea in 2003.

Their trial at Chester Crown Court is entering its eighth week.

His wife denies murder. However, earlier this week she changed her account and told the jury of seven men and five women that she had seen her husband beat Shafilea on the night of the alleged murder.

She also claimed he had threatened to do the same to her and their other children if she ever asked him what had happened to the teenager.

Giving evidence in court yesterday, Ahmed denied ever hurting his daughter or having anything to do with the murder. Tom Bayliss QC, defending, asked Ahmed: “What’s it like to stand there accused of murdering your own daughter?”

The defendant replied: “I can’t believe it. It’s devastating.”

“What’s it done to your family?” Mr Bayliss asked.

Ahmed replied: “It has actually destroyed my family, totally.”

Earlier Ahmed was asked how he felt about his wife.

He said: “I love her to bits.” He said that had not changed, even after she changed her version of events in court.

Mr Bayliss said: “Have you ever caused any harm to your daughter Shafilea?” Ahmed replied: “No.” Mr Bayliss asked: “Were you responsible for the death of your daughter?” Ahmed replied: “No.” He added: “We were devastated to find out that she had left home in the first place.”

When he was asked how he felt when his daughter’s body was found, he struggled to respond, before adding in a strained voice: “We couldn’t 
believe it when we heard.”

Shafilea vanished in September 2003 and her body was found on the bank of the River Kent in Cumbria the following February. The prosecution claims she was killed by her parents because she had brought shame on the family through her desire to have a westernised lifestyle rather than following tradition. Asked to describe Shafilea, Ahmed told the jury his eldest daughter was “talented” and “athletic”.

He added: “Education-wise, she was absolutely brilliant.

“Her best subject was art, she liked making mosaics.

“She was a character in herself. Very bubbly, very talkative. Every­thing a child should be.”

He said the family had been “fighting to achieve justice for our daughter Shafilea. We wanted to know what happened from day one.”

He said he did not initially report Shafilea missing as he did not believe the family would get any help from the police. It was not until last year that Shafilea’s younger sister, Alesha, provided the “final piece of the puzzle” about her death, the prosecution allege, when she disclosed seeing her parents killing Shafilea at the family home in Liverpool Road, Warrington.

Alesha described how her parents pushed Shafilea on to the settee and she heard her mother say “Just finish it here” as they forced a plastic bag into her mouth and suffocated her in front of their other children.

Alesha’s version of events appears to have been corroborated in writings her sister Mevish gave to a friend in 2008 which emerged shortly after the start of the trial. But Mevish later told the jury the writings were “fiction” and her parents played no part in Shafilea’s death.

The trial continues.