Shafilea’s mother Farzana Ahmed to appeal conviction (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Shafilea’s mother Farzana Ahmed to appeal conviction

6:50am Wednesday 5th September 2012 in News By James Rush, T&A Reporter

A mother found guilty of murdering her Bradford-born teenage daughter is seeking to overturn her conviction.

Farzana Ahmed, 49, and her husband Iftikhar, 52, were found guilty of murder by suffocating their daughter Shafilea Ahmed, 17, with a plastic bag in 2003 in an apparent “honour killing”.

They were jailed for life at Chester Crown Court last month at the end of a trial during which Shafilea’s sister Alesha told the jury her parents pushed Shafilea onto the settee in their house and she heard her mother say “just finish it here” as they forced a plastic bag into the teenager's mouth and killed her in front of their other children.

Sentencing the pair, Mr Justice Roderick Evans told them they would both serve a minimum of 25 years in prison.

A spokesman at Chester Crown Court last night confirmed that Farzana Ahmed had lodged an appeal at the court against her conviction.

The spokesman said the appeal had been sent to the Court of Appeal, which will decide whether it can be heard.

A CPS spokesman told the Telegraph & Argus it would wait to see what the grounds of appeal are.

At the sentencing hearing, Mr Justice Evans described Shafilea as a “determined, able and ambitious girl” who wanted to live a normal life.

He told the parents: “Your concern about being shamed in your community was greater than the love of your child.”

Shafilea had first lived with her parents in Girlington , but the family moved to Warrington when she was young.

Eight members of her extended family living in Bradford were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in the early stages of the police investigation, but were later released from their bail.

Shafilea’s sister Alesha told the trial her parents repeatedly attacked and abused Shafilea as she grew up. She described seeing her father carry Shafilea’s body to the car wrapped in a blanket. The children were later told to say nothing to the authorities amid a fear that they would suffer the same fate as their sister.

Shafilea’s decomposed remains were discovered in the River Kent in Cumbria in February 2004. It was not until 2010 Alesha provided the “final piece of the puzzle” about her death.