Shafilea Ahmed's sister says letter 'describing murder' was fiction - The Guardian

A sister of Shafilea Ahmed gave a friend letters in which she spoke about "how her parents killed the teenager", a court has heard.

Mevish Ahmed, 21, was giving evidence at Chester crown court in the trial of her parents, Iftikhar Ahmed, 52, and Farzana, 49, who deny murdering their 17-year-old daughter at the family home in Warrington, Cheshire, in September 2003. Shafilea's badly decomposed remains were found by a flooded river in Cumbria five months after her death.

Cross-examined by Andrew Edis QC, for the prosecution, Mevish, who was 12 when her sister disappeared, described the papers as "free writing" and fiction. They were written by her in 2008 and given to her friend, Shahin Munir, the jury heard.

Asked if she was aware that Munir had given the police "the letters you wrote to her about your sister's death", Mevish replied: "They are not letters about my sister's death, they are free writing. I write fiction. I write it quite a lot. Me and Alesha [another sister] used to write fictional things and make-believe. It's not necessarily associated with ourselves."

Asked if the papers "were about your parents killing Shafilea", she replied: "Like I said, fiction writing."

Earlier in the trial, her older sister Alesha, 23, told the jury her parents had pushed Shafilea on to the settee in the family house and she heard her mother say in Urdu: "Just finish it here" as they forced a plastic bag into her mouth and suffocated her in front of their other children.

The prosecution alleges the couple murdered their westernised daughter because they believed her conduct was bringing shame on the family.

It was not until 2010 that Alesha provided police with the "final piece of the puzzle" about her sister's death, the trial has heard. Iftikhar and Farzana Ahmed deny murder. The trial continues.