The sister of a teenager killed in an “honour” killing told police she watched her parents suffocate her sister by forcing a carrier bag into her throat so she couldn’t breathe and placing their hands over her face, a court heard on Tuesday.
Alesha Ahmed, now 23, said she watched her parents “acting together” as, she said, they murdered her older sister Shafilea Ahmed, 17, in September 2003.
Taxi driver Iftikhar Ahmed, 52, and his wife Farzana, 49, deny murdering their eldest daughter, whose badly decomposed remains were found near a flooded Cumbrian river in February 2004.
Andrew Edis QC, prosecuting, told Chester crown court that on the night of Shafilea’s death, Alesha saw her parents suffocate her sister at the family home in Warrington, Cheshire. He said: “Both parents, acting together, got a carrier bag that they forced into her mouth. Their hands were over her face, closing her airways so she couldn’t breathe.”
Giving evidence from behind a screen on Tuesday , Alesha wept as she recalled how a knife was used during a previous “frantic attack” by her parents to scare Shafilea. She also told how Shafilea was given a drugged drink by her mother before flying to Pakistan. On the trip, Alesha said, her father threatened Shafilea, saying: “If something happened to her, no one would find out.” Alesha alleged that everyone in Pakistan carried guns and their father said: “There’s a gun back there [a reference to another room].”
On the night of her sister’s disappearance on 11 September 2003, the prosecution said, Alesha “talks about looking into the kitchen and seeing her mother sorting through a pile of blankets and sheets. She saw her mother with black binbags and two rolls of wide brown tape and some black tape.”
Looking out of the kitchen window, she saw her father with a large object wrapped in binbags and brown tape, “which she assumed was the body of her sister”. At around 10pm, she heard a car driving off with the body inside and her father at the wheel, while her mother stayed in the house. The following evening, there was a sighting of a white van in Sedgwick when Alesha was “telling her mates in Warrington that her father had killed her sister and chopped up the body”, Edis said.
In court, Alesha recalled an occasion when a knife was used to scare Shafilea: “They were just hitting her, it was quite frantic really and out of control. She was just sat there and taking it.” She told the court she thought her parents were trying to scare her, but the incident left marks on Shafilea’s neck.
On another occasion, Shafilea was kept in a room above a garage conversion at the house and not given food for two or three days. “Mum would abuse her and not give her anything to eat for a long period of time,” she said.
Alesha said her sister didn’t want to go to Pakistan in February 2003. When she woke up on the morning of the flight, her mother gave Shafilea a drink. She overheard her mother and uncle talking about the intoxicating effect of the drink.
“They were being kind to her,” she said of her parents. “I think they just wanted to make her think that everything was OK and nothing was going on.” She said Shafilea had the drink and became complicit. “She was a bit slow at the airport. She was having to lean on the trolleys.”
Alesha didn’t tell her about the drink because it was too late “and she would’ve probably felt betrayed by me. I was the person who just stood there, but at the time it was difficult to speak up.”
When she woke up in Pakistan, Shafilea had a disagreement with her father, and it was then that he made the veiled threat about the gun and no one finding out if anything happened to her, she said.
Alesha said that her parents had not been particularly observant of the Muslim Faith until after their daughter’s death, “but they did fast during Ramadan”.
She described their lives as “more restricted than Western culture, what to do with your free time, going out with friends, who you can see and the clothes you can wear”.
“Because my Dad was at work more, it was more my Mum who laid down the rules in a sense. Most time, Dad used to work evenings and most of the days.”
She said: “I think Shafilea found it difficult. She had a life that our parents didn’t know about – it was a secret life, as well. There was a lot of secrecy about things that were going on at college in order for her to live her life like she wanted to.”
The conflict, she said, was about “what she used to wear and who she spoke to. It really deteriorated when she was 14 to 17.” She added: “There would be physical abuse. It was both of them, but because Mum was at home more often, it was more her, but they were both involved.”
Asked by the prosecutor how often it happened, she replied: “Too often. It was every day or every other day. The arguments and little slaps, especially the last few years before her death.”
In November 2003, a covert listening device was placed in the Ahmeds’ house. They were recorded discussing evidence and talking about using the press to get away with murder. Iftikhar Ahmed is heard to say: “What are they going to find in the car?” Farzana was heard “discussing about bodily fluids and said ‘No, and even if they find saliva in the car, it’s not as if she didn’t sit in the car’.”
Edis argued it was an odd thing to be doing if their daughter was alive and well. Iftikhar said: “By getting the support of newspapers, you can get away with murder”, Edis told the court.
The bug recorded Iftikhar saying that the UK justice system works on proof, adding: “Without any proof even if you sisterfuckers kill 40 people, until it is found, they can’t do anything to you,” Edis told the jury.
He said that in a robbery took place at the family home in Liverpool Road, Warrington August 2010. Three men entered the house and tied everyone up, apart from Alesha. “The reason she was not tied up was she was involved,” Edis said. At an earlier hearing, Alesha pleaded guilty to this. She will be sentenced later.
Edis said she is “either telling the truth about the death of her sister which she has kept under wraps for years for family loyalty and eventually, perhaps, because that relationship with her parents has become toxic, she allowed herself to become involved in the robbery”. “Is it the truth or is it a wicked lie?” Edis concluded. He described the murder as a bombshell and questioned why she would make it up.
The trial continues.