FOUR defendants involved in the Denholme murder trial are not giving evidence, the jury was told today.

This week has seen three of the accused men take turns in the witness box at Bradford Crown Court to give their accounts of what happened to Mohammed Feazan Ayaz.

LIVE BLOG: Read Friday's Denholme murder trial hearing as it happened

Raheel Khan, 27, of no fixed address; Suleman Khan, 20, of Sandford Road, Bradford Moor, Bradford; and Robert Wainwright, 26, of Mannville Terrace, Bradford city centre, all plead not guilty to murdering Mr Ayaz, known as Fizzy.

Raheel Khan has admitted his manslaughter.

Junaid Hussain, 28, of Silverhill Road, Bradford Moor, and Stephen Queeney, 34, of Junction Row, Bolton Road, Bradford, who also deny Mr Ayaz’s murder, are not giving evidence in the trial, their barristers said.

Shaoib Shafiq, 20, of Gladstone Street, Bradford Moor, and a 17-year-old Bradford youth, who cannot be named because of his age, plead not guilty to assisting an offender.

Neither are giving evidence in the trial, the jury was told.

Mr Ayaz, 20, of Duckworth Grove, Manningham, Bradford, died from a traumatic head injury after he was stripped naked, punched, slapped and kicked to degrade and humiliate him.

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He was beaten, tormented and urinated on in Unit 2 at the Denholme Business Centre in Halifax Road, Denholme, after being dropped off there at 8.30pm on June 30 last year to chill with friends.

The jury has heard that he was drunk and threatening to publicise phone videos on social media of Raheel Khan having consensual sex.

Mr Ayaz was found dead on Saffron Drive, Allerton, Bradford, in the early hours of the following morning.

His naked body had been dragged from the unit wrapped in a curtain and transported in the back of a Ford S Max in convoy with a black Smart Car.

This afternoon, John Ryder QC, Hussain’s counsel, read out a statement from Hussain’s father, Ashfaq Hussain.

Mr Hussain senior said Junaid was his only son. He was a pleasant boy who struggled at school and was sent into private education. But it did not help him and he left at 16 with no qualifications.

Junaid began working at the family restaurant, doing a variety of jobs that he enjoyed, including welcoming diners at the front of house.

In 2017, Junaid changed for the worse when his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. He began to abuse alcohol and started using cocaine. He was going out more and sometimes did not turn up for work.

In 2018, his mother’s health improved, and Mr Hussain enrolled his son into a clinic for several weeks to treat his substance misuse.

Junaid emerged a changed man, spending quality time with his family, not taking drugs and not seeing his old friends.

But his mother’s cancer returned in an aggressive form and she passed away. Her death hit Junaid very hard, he began seeing his former acquaintances again and all progress was lost.

The pain of his mother’s death turned him back to cannabis, Mr Hussain said.

He could not comment on what happened at the Denholme Business Centre that night, but Junaid had been smoking cannabis and drinking; the first time he had touched alcohol since he had been treated at the clinic.

On Monday afternoon, Richard Wright QC will give his closing speech to the jury. Counsel for the defendants will then each give their final speeches before the trial judge, Mr Justice Goss, sums up the case.

The 12 women on the jury will then start considering their verdicts.

The trial continues.