Pakistani couple bags 25yrs in jail for mudering their daughter

Shafilea

A Pakistani court has sentenced a husband and his wife to life in prison for killing their daughter. Iftikhar, 52, and Farzana Ahmed, 49, suffocated their 17-year-old daughter, Shafilea, in 2003 with a plastic bag. The couple - first cousins from the Pakistani village of Uttam - were ordered to serve a minimum of 25 years in prison. "Shafilea was only 10 when she began to rebel against her parents' strict rules, according to prosecutor Andrew Edis. The young girl would hide make-up, false nails and western clothes at school, changing into conservative clothes before her parents picked her up. But it was the last year of her life that proved to be the most traumatic. During the trial that began in May, jurors heard from Shafilea's younger sister, Alesha, who said she witnessed the murder when she was 12. After an argument about Shafilea's dress, her parents pushed her down on a couch, stuffed a thin white plastic bag into her mouth and held their hands over her mouth and nose until she died, Alesha testified. As she was struggling, her mother said, "just finish it here," according to Alesha's testimony. Although Shafilea's other siblings contradicted the testimony, the last-minute emergence of a diary convinced jurors. The diary belonged to a friend of one of Shafilea's other sisters, Mev. In it, the friend relays conversations she had with the sister about the night Shafilea died - details that supported Alesha's testimony. When Shafilea became a teenager, she became interested in boys - something that spurred punishment from her parents. School officials alerted social services in October 2002 after Shafilea came to school with injuries to her face. That same month, Shafilea told a social worker that she was to be married in Pakistan in February 2003. In January 2003, she ran away, telling friends her parents would not leave her alone. She eventually returned. In February 2003, she ran away again and pleaded with British authorities to allow her to move out of her parents' house because, she said, they were abusive and trying to force her into an arranged marriage. Some of Shafilea's own words also proved compelling to jurors. In the application form to move out, she said she had suffered from regular domestic violence from the age of 15. One parent would hold me whilst the other hit me," she said.Her father snatched her off the streets, however, in the same month as the application. He bundled her into a car and took her to Pakistan against her will, Alesha said. In protest, Shafilea drank bleach and was brought back to Britain in May 2003. She spent eight weeks in the hospital trying to recover from damage done to her throat. Even in her weakened and desperate state, Shafilea's parents were relentless. Alesha described that after the attack, her siblings ran upstairs and she watched as her father carried Shafilea's body to the car wrapped in a blanket. She was reported missing shortly after, with her parents making a teary-eyed media appeal for information leading to their daughter. But police were suspicious - so much so that they bugged the house. Shafilea's decomposed remains were eventually discovered in the River Kent in Cumbria in February 2004, but it wasn't until 2010 that Alesha provided the key testimony. Culled from NDTV