Finally convicted and sentenced.
British Muslim couple handed life sentence for killing westernized daughter
Younger child’s eyewitness testimony leads to conviction of Pakistan-born parents
LONDON (AP) — The girl was murdered by her Pakistani parents for her Western ways. And it was her little sister who bravely told jurors how her mother and father suffocated the 17-year-old with a plastic bag — gripping testimony that led to her parents’ murder conviction on Friday.
Justice Roderick Evans sentenced Iftikhar, 52, and Farzana Ahmed, 49, to life in prison for killing their daughter, Shafilea, in 2003. The couple — first cousins from the Pakistani village of Uttam — were ordered to serve a minimum of 25 years in prison.
A Cheshire Police handout photo of murdered teenager Shafilea Ahmed ([hoto credit: AP/Chesire Police)
“She was being squeezed between two cultures — the culture and way of life that she saw around her and wanted to embrace, and the culture and way of life you wanted to impose on her,” Evans said during the sentencing at the Chester Crown Court in northwest England.
In Britain, more than 25 women have been killed in so-called “honor killings” in the past decade. Families have sometimes lashed out at their children on the belief that they have brought their household shame by becoming too westernized or by refusing a marriage
35 years later they decide to do something. I remember this happening to a girl when I was little and remember saying to my father ” why do they bring them up over here to have choices when they can’t make those choices?”………and they still don’t have those choices, apparently the father liked the western culture, especially discos where I suppose he could watch girls dancing.