Police suspect honour killing
2004-02-20 13:52
London - Police in the north of England investigating a suspected "honour killing" of a teenage British girl of Pakistani descent searched a river bank on Thursday where a body was discovered 15 days earlier.
The remains were washed up during heavy flooding of the River Kent in Sedgwick, Cumbria, on February 4.
It has yet to be identified as missing 17-year-old Shafilea Ahmed, of Warrington, Cheshire, but jewellery on the decomposing body was said to be similar to items worn by the teenager.
Results of DNA tests were not expected until Friday at the earliest, police said.
The British-born Muslim teenager went missing shortly after a family trip to Pakistan where, it has been alleged, she drank bleach after being introduced to a suitor for an arranged marriage.
Last year, Cheshire Constabulary detectives said they believed Shafilea was dead - and refused to rule out the possibility that she was the victim of a "honour killing", murdered for having shamed her family.
Her taxi driver father Iftikhar, 44, and mother Farzana, 41, were arrested on suspicion of Shafilea's kidnap in December. They were questioned, then released on police bail, and deny harming their girl.
In a front-page report pn Thursday, the Independent newspaper said Shafilea was a bright senior high school student, eyeing a law career, who privately described her anguish in poetry.
"I wish my parents would be proud of wot I done," she wrote in one verse, using English slang. "Instead it's 'You've brought shame'... I don't wanna hear this no more, No no no."
But her father was quoted as saying: "I love my daughter... The police claim there was an arranged marriage for Shaffi, but that's totally wrong."
- AFP