MPs will be asked to vote again following the results of a consultation into abortion counselling MPs will have a fresh vote on abortion before the next general election when the government presents the findings of a consultation into the system of counselling for women with unwanted pregnancies. An attempt to strip abortion providers of their role in counselling women was heavily defeated in the House of Commons on Wednesday, by 368 votes to 118, after a split between the original supporters of the amendment. But Nadine Dorries, the Tory MP who tabled the amendment, declared she had “won the war” after the health minister Anne Milton announced that the “spirit” of her plans would be embodied in a consultation. MPs will be asked to vote on any changes to the system of counselling when the results of the consultation are presented to parliament. The Dorries amendment would have stripped non-statutory abortion providers such as Marie Stopes and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (Bpas) from offering counselling to women. This was designed to provide greater opportunities for independent counsellors, some of whom are influenced by pro-life groups, to provide counselling. NHS abortion providers would still be free to offer counselling. MPs voted by a majority of 250 to reject the amendment after Dorries lost the support of her co-sponsor, the former Labour minister Frank Field. He called on Dorries not to force a vote after Milton said the government intended to bring forward new proposals on counselling. Dorries won the support of three cabinet ministers – Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, Liam Fox, the defence secretary, and Owen Paterson, the Northern Ireland secretary. George Osborne, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband voted against the amendment. Downing Street said Cameron would have voted against but had to attend a meeting in No 10 with Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council. The amendment was defeated so heavily because Milton impressed some pro-life MPs by outlining details of the consultation on counselling. The health minister said: “The government is … supportive of the spirit of these amendments and we intend to bring forward proposals for regulations accordingly, but after consultation. Primary legislation is not only unnecessary but would deprive parliament of the opportunity to consider the detail of how this service would develop and evolve.” Dorries hailed the announcement from Milton as a sign of victory. She told the BBC: “We lost the battle but we have won the war.” A senior source at the Department of Health said that any changes would have to be approved by MPs in a free vote. The source said the changes would not change the abortion act. But Mark Pritchard, secretary of the Tory 1922 committee who supported the Dorries amendment, said that a wider vote on abortion should be held. “This was a good result considering the amount of misinformation and disinformation put out by opponents of the amendment and by the whips’ narks. Many colleagues have said to me that a wider debate on abortion and term limits needs to take place in this parliament.” Milton’s announcement about the consultation came towards the end of a scratchy debate in which Dorries said Cameron had initially encouraged her. Dorries claimed that the prime minister had advised her on the wording of her amendment by saying that she should describe abortion counsellors as independent. Dorries said: “I went to see the prime minister regarding this amendment and he was very encouraging. In fact it was at the prime minister’s insistence that I inserted the word ‘independent’. I attended a meeting at the Department of Health and at that meeting it was decided what the outcome, the process that would be implemented, to make this a reality.” Dorries claimed that Cameron changed his mind under pressure from Nick Clegg, after the deputy prime minister was lobbied by the former Lib Dem MP Evan Harris. Dorries said: “Basically the Liberal Democrats, in fact a former MP who lost his seat in this place, is blackmailing our prime minister. Our prime minister has been put in an impossible position regarding this amendment. Our health bill has been held to ransom by a former Liberal Democrat MP.” A senior Lib Dem source dismissed her allegation: “That is utter rubbish. [Nick] doesn’t need Evan to tell him the problems with her amendment.” The defeat was welcomed by bpas. Ann Furedi, its chief executive, said: “Bpas is pleased to see Nadine Dorries’s amendment so overwhelmingly rejected. We look forward to being able to focus our efforts on the issues which pose a genuine problem for women considering ending a pregnancy.” Dorries insisted that she did not want to restrict access to abortion. “I do not want to return to the days of back-street abortionists,” she said. “I am pro-choice. Abortion is here to stay.” The MP said it was wrong for abortion providers to counsel women with unplanned pregnancies. “It must be wrong that the abortion provider, who is paid to the tune of £60m to carry out terminations, should also provide the counselling if a woman feels strong or brave enough to ask for it. If an organisation is paid that much for abortions, where is the incentive to reduce them?” Diane Abbott, the shadow public health minister, said: “This amendment is a shoddy, ill-conceived attempt to promote non-facts to make a non-case – namely that tens of thousands of women every year are either not getting counselling that they request or are getting counselling that is so poor that only new legislation can remedy the situation. In matters of this kind, if legislation is the answer then you have almost certainly asked the wrong question.” NHS reforms offer ‘opportunities’ The reforms of the NHS present “huge opportunities” for the private sector, a health minister said yesterday. In a speech to the Independent Healthcare Forum, Lord Howe said it should not matter “one jot” who provides care to NHS patients as long as it was free at the point of delivery. Private companies, he said, would do well under the plans as long as they can offer patients high quality services that compete favourably with current NHS care. He said it would be illegal for any commissioner or the government to favour any one sector – NHS or private – over the other. Lord Howe said a level playing field was being created and competition was based on quality of outcomes, not price. It will be “the best providers, private or NHS, that will prosper, and it will be patients that benefit most” under the plans, he said. Christina McAnea, head of health at Unison, said: “It is clear that the government does want to break up the NHS and get more private sector involvement. Patients do care deeply whom they are seen by. They do not like the thought of private providers making profits from care.” PA Abortion Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk
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Ministers are looking at how benefits, or tax credits could be taken away under plans being drawn up in response to the riots Magistrates and crown court judges could be asked to dock benefits from convicted criminals under preliminary proposals being drawn up by the government in response to the riots, the Guardian can reveal. Ministers are looking hard at how benefits, or tax credits, could be taken away to show criminals that privileges provided by the state can be temporarily withdrawn. Under the proposals anyone convicted of a crime could be punished once rather than potentially facing separate fines – first by a magistrates court and then a benefit office. By giving powers to the courts to strip benefits, the Department of Work and Pensions would no longer be obliged to intervene directly in the criminal justice system. Sources indicate that a vast array of punitive options are being examined as Whitehall races to meet an October deadline to publish its post-riot response. Number 10 is actively looking at the withdrawal of child maintenance or child benefit from parents who allow children to truant, or repeatedly allow them to stay on the streets late at night. Ministers are also looking at ensuring prisoners released from jail without a job are fast-tracked on to the government’s Work Programme. Some councils have announced plans to evict families of convicted rioters from social housing. But ministers are increasingly wary of measures to evict families after a child has broken the law, pointing out that government has a duty to prevent hardship, and might anyway simply be required to rehouse them in more expensive bed-and-breakfast accommodation. David Cameron has also drafted in the victims’ commissioner, Louise Casey, to set out how the government should intervene with the 120,000 families identified as having deep-seated problems. Casey, best known for her invention of the controversial antisocial behaviour orders, oversaw a multi-agency approach to problem families from the Home Office. She has in the past expressed frustration at the lack of co-ordination between government agencies in their efforts to help chaotic families, and Cameron regards her as well placed to judge what went wrong or right with Labour programmes. Ministers have pointed to the failure of health officials – locally and nationally – to co-operate with efforts to identify problem families. Health officials claim they have a duty to patient confidentiality, but in fact are often best placed to identify early a family liable to go off the rails. In 2008 Gordon Brown promised to target “more than 110,000 problem families with disruptive young people”. Parents were to be put on intensive courses to help them supervise their children. In response to the riots, Cameron said he would require each family’s problems be addressed by the end of parliament. The latest official figures show that in 2009-10 only 3,518 families were actually in the intervention programme and it has helped only 7,300 families since being set up in 2006. The Department for Education has compiled a list identifying the whereabouts of problem families. But since coming to power the Conservatives have removed ringfencing from the programme. Westminster council is now being cited by ministers for running the most successful example of a family recovery programme. Set up in 2008, parents joining a six-month programme are required to sign a contract with the council to take part. A team is appointed for a family as a single contact point acting as the gateway to all public services. The agreement sets out the possible sanctions – eviction, parenting orders, care proceedings and other forms of court action – in the event of a repeated failure to co-operate with the programme. The council claims the average number of arrests for crime households dropped from 9 to 1.5 a month and antisocial behaviour was reduced by nearly half. The government is also looking at offering clear options to rehouse families where a gang member wants to leave a gang but fears retribution. Ministers want more councils to be open about the scale of the gang problem, and claim that until the pervasiveness of gangs is admitted, progress will not be made. Ministers are also looking at schemes in Boston and New York, where the police do much more after hours to help youngsters. They believe the crisis gives the police an opportunity to rethink its concept of community policing. Ministers also suggest the option of a public inquiry into the riots has not yet been irrevocably ruled out. So far the government has appointed a panel to hear voices from inner-city communities where the riots occurred. Cameron is instinctively opposed to a further expensive public inquiry so soon after he appointed the inquiry into the future of media regulation. UK riots State benefits Welfare Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano Tuesday laughed off attacks on her by the Drudge Report , saying that the conservative website was “just wrong” to suggest the government was overreaching in its efforts to keep Americans safe. “I have my own nickname,” Napolitano told Politico ‘s Mike Allen . “It’s kind of a deal. You know that you’ve made it when you get your own nickname.” “I think my nickname is ‘Big Sis.’ And I don’t think [Matt Drudge] means it kindly, actually,” she added. “I think what he means is we are watching too much — kind of an Orwellian view. And he’s just wrong — he’s just wrong.” The DHS secretary explained that her department’s privacy office took great care to prevent government overreaching. “Madam Secretary, what I thought you were going to say — and why I really perked up — I thought you had a nickname for him,” Allen noted. “Maybe,” Napolitano replied, laughing. “No, I think we should try to keep our discussion at a high level.”
Continue reading …Libyan leaders fear Gaddafi may flee south across the border into Niger
September 7, 2011 No Comment
Niger’s foreign minister warns that the country does not have the means to close the border Libya’s new leaders were urgently trying to stop Muammar Gaddafi fleeing south as neighbouring Niger said it would be impossible to close its border, and evidence emerged suggesting the fugitive dictator was last seen in the very southern-most part of Libya. As the National Transitional Council (NTC) announced it had sent a delegation to Niamey to discuss how to stop “any kind of infiltration” by Gaddafi or his family, Niger’s foreign minister said the former ruler had neither crossed nor asked to cross the border. However, a day after it emerged that Gaddafi’s personal security chief had been admitted to the country, Niger’s foreign minister Mohamed Bazoum told the BBC that it had not decided whether it would accept Gaddafi himself or hand him over to the International Criminal Court (ICC). “We have no means to close the border … It is too big and we have very, very small means for that,” he said. Fathi Baja, the head of political affairs for the NTC, said the group was determined to try to prevent the dictator fleeing to Niger or Algeria. “I think he’s near one of these borders … and he’s looking for a chance to leave. We’re asking every country not to accept him. We want these people for justice,” Baja told Reuters. The leader of the interim government’s manhunt, who said late on Tuesday that Gaddafi had last been seen three days before near the village of Ghwat, around 200 miles from the border with Niger. Hisham Buhagiar told Reuters: “We have it from many sources that he’s trying to go further south, towards Chad or Niger.” It was not possible to confirm whether this supported another claim made on Wednesdayby a spokesman for Tripoli’s new military council, according to which Libyan fighters had located Gaddafi at an undisclosed location in Libya and had surrounded him on all sides. Anis Sharif said authorities were waiting to decide whether to capture or kill him. “He can’t get out,” Sharif told the Associated Press, without giving any more detail of the presumed location. “We are just playing games with him.” In a signal of just how mired in contradiction and confusion the manhunt is, Libya’s new deputy defence minister Mohammad Tanaz said the NTC did not know where Gaddafi was. Finding him, he added, was not a “priority”. As fresh detail emerged of the convoys reported to have crossed the Niger-Libya border in recent days, the government in capital Niamey acknowledged that Gaddafi’s former aide Mansour Dhao had been allowed in to the country “for humanitarian reasons”. Bazoum said that at least three convoys had come in to Niger containing, he claimed, several pro-Gaddafi businessmen, as well as Agaly ag Alambo, a Tuareg rebel leader. There were fewer than 20 of them, he added, and they would be free to stay in Niger. The US said it believed senior Gaddafi regime figures had also crossed over the border, but not Gaddafi himself. In Ougadougou, Burkina Faso, president Blaise Compaoré denied reports it had offered asylum to the former Libyan despot. As the search for Gaddafi continued, lead rebel negotiator Abdullah Kanshil said his son Saif al-Islam had been spotted in the town of Bani Walid on Monday and was probably still there. “Saif was sighted two days ago,” he said on Wednesday in Boshtata, about 50km from the town. “He’s coming in and out.” Kanshil said that Bani Walid was made up of 52 villages, three of which were still occupied by pro-Gaddafi gunmen. It was also possible that Saif could be hiding in its numerous caves. Another “big fish” might also be in the town, Kanshil added. Pressed for details, he replied: “Another of the sons. The ugly one.” Peace talks appeared to break down on Tuesday. But Kanshil insisted: “There is a lot of progress today in the conference with the clan leaders in Bani Walid. They are safe and sound. A few people waved their guns and cursed at them [after talks yesterday] but the people of Bani Walid made they got home to their families.” Asked if would be necessary to take Bani Walid by force, Kanshil said: “No, we hope not. The people of Bani Walid are with the revolution. But there are 80 snipers there, that’s our worry. Some in caves, some on roofs of buildings, some walking in places.” Any decision on an attack rested with the National Transitional Council, he said. “They are the leadership.” Muammar Gaddafi Libya Niger Arab and Middle East unrest Lizzy Davies guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Top tax rate will raise £12.6bn more in revenue, official figures reveal
September 7, 2011 No Comment
Government’s own projections favour 50p tax rate for highest earners as pressure mounts on George Osborne to scrap it The 50p tax rate will raise an additional £12.6bn over the next five years even if people choose to leave the country to avoid it, according to the government’s own projections which will add to pressure on the Treasury not to scrap higher taxes. By 2015-16 the 50% tax rate for people earning above £150,000 will bring in £3.2bn more than if the tax rate had stayed at 40% – rising from £1.1bn this year and totalling £12.6bn over the five year period. Compared with a 45% rate, 50% will bring in an additional £5.3bn. The figures, contained in the government projections from last November and revealed in a parliamentary question tabled by the Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft, emerge as Osborne is coming under pressure from the City and economists to remove the 50p rate. In a letter to the Financial Times on Wednesday, 20 leading economists, including two former members of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee called for the top rate of tax to be removed claiming it was damaging growth and failing to generate significant revenues. The chancellor is believed to be reconsidering the higher tax band and has asked the HMRC to evaluate its impact after the self-assesment deadline for its first year, in January. It should report in time for the budget. Osborne has previously said that “there’s not much point in having taxes that are economically inefficient”. New figures have emerged amid calls from Labour for the government to commission independent research into impact of the higher tax band and signals from the Lib Dems that they would oppose the scrapping of the 50p rate. Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, said: “If the Chancellor really wants to know how effective the top rate of tax is he should immediately ask the Office for Budget Responsibility, not just HMRC, to produce a report genuinely independent of government.” Lord Oakeshott, the Lib Dem peer and close ally of Vince Cable, said: “This gives the lie to the special pleading form the super rich and the Tory right for a hand out to the top 1% of taxpayers. This official treasury estimate, including possible behavioural reactions, shows the 50p top tax rate raising £12.6bn over five years. Warren Buffet in America and business leaders in France and Germany are calling for shared sacrifice – why are Britain’s super rich so super selfish?” The Treasury prediction takes into account the fact that people could opt to maximise their pension contributions, form a company or even leave the country to avoid paying extra tax. However, the Institute for Fiscal Studies is poised to publish a paper suggesting that the impact of the 50p tax rate on the highest paid could trigger people to adapt to avoid paying the extra tax to the extent that it could even cost the country money. In its Mirrlees Review, to be published next week, it reports: “It is not clear whether the 50% rate will raise any revenue at all. There are numerous ways in which people might reduce their taxable incomes in response to higher tax rates; at some point, increasing tax rates starts to cost money instead of raising it.” The IFS paper suggests that anything above the original highest rate of 40% would prompt people to find ways to avoid paying it. However, deputy director Carl Emmerson stressed that their figures were passed on data from the 1980s that have a high degree of uncertainty. ” Even in 10 years time I don’t think there will be a definitive answer to what tax revenues in, say, 2010-11 would have been had the top rate of tax been 40p not 50p.” A Treasury spokesman confirmed that the chancellor has asked for an analysis of the revenue raised by the top tax rate. “The government is committed to a competitive tax system, but in reducing the deficit, we have always been clear that those with the broadest shoulders should carry the greatest burden.” Economic policy Economics Tax and spending Tax Income tax George Osborne Tax avoidance Polly Curtis guardian.co.uk
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Planning row between Suffolk villagers escalates to court case after doll put on display in window It began as a planning dispute between affluent neighbours in a Suffolk village, but resulted in the arrest of a woman accused of racially aggravated harassment after she displayed a golliwog in the window of her house. Jena Mason will appear before Lowestoft magistrates on Tuesday, Suffolk police said. The 65-year-old was arrested after her black neighbour, Rosemarie O’Donnell, complained about the doll. It appeared in the only window visible from the home of O’Donnell and her husband, Stephen, the couple said, after the disagreement over planning permission got out of hand. The row between the neighbours in the village of Worlingham started after Mason and her husband, Terry, who live in a 16th century manor house, applied for permission to build new stables on their land. Their son-in-law, who also lives in the manor house, is in training for the British Olympic dressage team and is understood to need the space for his horses. The O’Donnells, who live in a £1m barn conversion next door, hired a planning consultant to challenge the application, arguing that it would lead to an increase in traffic and boundary and right of way issues as well as raising the question of how organic waste from the horses would be disposed of. A golliwog then appeared on a ground-floor window sill in the Masons’ house, near the main entrance to the barn. Rosemarie O’Donnell, a 48-year-old businesswoman with Jamaican roots, said the doll was an affront to her and her two mixed-race children, and the sight of it had left her “shocked and upset”. She took a photograph of the doll and – days after planning permission for the new stables was granted by the local council – gave it to police and made a formal complaint. A police spokeswoman said: “We have had a complaint from a member of the public, we have investigated it and both the Crown Prosecution Service and ourselves have agreed there is enough to prosecute.” James Hartley, Mason’s solicitor, said his client was “devastated by what was going on” and intended to plead not guilty because the golliwog had ended up on the window shelf as she was tidying up her grandson’s toys. “It is an innocent act which has been interpreted in a completely different way,” he said. “She does not accept that she acted in a racial manner. It is a large house, and she lives there with other members of her family and there is a grandson who is 16 months old. She was tidying up the toys.” Mason is currently on bail and faces a penalty of up to £2,500 if found guilty of the offence. On Wednesday, O’Donnell’s 54-year-old husband, an IT executive, said the couple had had a number of disputes with the Masons over the stable plans and the Masons’ dogs, but dismissed the claim that the golliwog had been accidentally put on display. “It’s not a children’s toy,” he told the Daily Mail. “You can see it has buttons and other items on it. It was clearly deliberately placed on the window sill facing out of the window. I do not believe it was casually tossed up there. It has caused immense upset. You live in the countryside and you think you have got away from all this nonsense.” The couple moved to Manor Farm Barn, a five-bedroom conversion, in 2003 from Kent. Race issues Alexandra Topping guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Andy Coulson refuses to reappear at MPs’ phone-hacking inquiry | Lisa O’Carroll
September 7, 2011 No Comment
Former News of the World editor cites concern about ‘parallel inquiries’ and ‘publicity’ Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World and the prime minister’s former personal communications director, is reportedly refusing to appear before the Commons select committee that is investigating phone-hacking. His solicitors have written to the culture, media and sport committee declining an invitation to appear citing “concerns” about “parallel inquiries and investigations and the publicity generated by them”. Coulson resigned from the News International paper in 2007 after its former royal editor Clive Goodman was jailed on phone-hacking offences. He has consistently denied knowing that phone hacking took place but last month a previously unseen letter from Goodman emerged that claimed phone hacking was “widely discussed” at editorial conferences until Coulson banned mentions of it. Goodman’s letter also claimed that Coulson had offered to let him keep his job if he agreed not to implicate the paper in hacking when it came to court. The chairman of select committee, John Whittingdale, wrote to Coulson the day this letter was released into the public domain, inviting him to consider whether his previous denials of knowledge of phone hacking should be amended. Coulson’s solicitors at law firm DLA Piper reportedly said in their reply to Whittingdale: “We have expressed our concerns to you previously about the effects of the parallel inquiries and investigations and the publicity generated by them. Given those concerns … our client does not wish to make any additional comments on the evidence he gave to the committee.” DLA Piper refused to comment. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook . Andy Coulson Phone hacking Clive Goodman News of the World News International John Whittingdale National newspapers Newspapers Newspapers & magazines Lisa O’Carroll guardian.co.uk
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Comedian falls behind schedule in 140-mile swim for Sport Relief but has still raised more than £200,000 David Walliams is falling behind schedule in his charity river swim after coming down with “Thames tummy”. The comedian has been ill with a high temperature, vomiting and diarrhoea but has still managed to raise more than £200,000 for Sport Relief three days into his challenge. He said: “I always knew there was a risk that taking in the water could cause problems, but now it’s happened it’s still hit me really hard. I was sweating in the night and have been to the toilet a lot this morning. This is already much harder than I thought it would be… and London seems a long way away.” The Little Britain star, 40, is swimming 140 miles over eight days from Gloucestershire to London. David Walliams Swimming Charities Swimming guardian.co.uk
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Iftikhar and Farzana Ahmed will appear in court on Friday, charged with the murder of their daughter The parents of Shafilea Ahmed, the victim of a suspected “honour killing” almost eight years ago, have been charged with murder and appeared before magistrates on Wednesday. Ahmed, 17, disappeared from her home town of Warrington, Cheshire, in September 2003. Her badly decomposed remains were found in February 2004 on the banks of the River Kent in Cumbria, following a flood. She was an intelligent young woman who had hoped to study law at university and become a solicitor. Her inquest heard that the most likely cause of death was strangulation or suffocation. Police said Iftikhar Ahmed, 51, a taxi driver, and Farzana Ahmed, 48, a housewife, of Liverpool Road, Warrington, were arrested on suspicion of murder in September 2010. Cheshire police have now charged both with murder following authorisation by the Crown Prosecution Service. The couple made a six-minute appearance at Halton magistrates’ court in Runcorn, Cheshire, on Wednesday afternoon. They were remanded in custody until Friday, when they will appear via videolink at Manchester crown court. They spoke only to confirm through an interpreter their names, ages and address. The murder charge was put to them, but no plea was entered. There were no submissions made by the prosecution or defence solicitors. The court heard that the couple were charged with murdering the teenager on 11 September 2003 in Cheshire. Iftikhar Ahmed, wearing an open-necked white shirt, gave family members a thumbs-up as he was taken down from the dock. His wife, who spoke through an interpreter, was on the verge of tears. During the hearing Mrs Ahmed stood with her head to one side, and wiped her nose. As she left the dock she signalled to members of her family in the public gallery with a raised finger. At the inquest into Shafilea’s death, Ian Smith, the coroner for south and east Cumbria, recorded a verdict of unlawful killing. The couple have always strenuously denied any involvement in their daughter’s death and once stormed into a police press conference to tearfully protest their innocence, claiming the police were racially motivated. But at the inquest, evidence was heard that Shafilea claimed she was held down and beaten by her parents and was fearful of an arranged marriage. The coroner ruled that she had been the victim of a “very vile murder”. She disappeared shortly after a trip to Pakistan in which she was introduced to a potential suitor. During the trip, she drank bleach and harmed herself in an apparent cry for help, and needed regular hospital treatment to correct injuries to her throat. The coroner said: “Shafilea was the victim of a very vile murder and there’s no evidence before the court as to who did it. There are things people know that have not been told to this court.” He said Shafilea had not had justice. “Her ambition was to live her own life in her own way: to study, to follow a career in the law and to do what she wanted to do. These are just basic fundamental rights and they were denied to her.” Mrs Ahmed was remanded to Styal prison in Cheshire and her husband was remanded to Liverpool prison. The couple were initially arrested on suspicion of kidnapping their daughter in December 2003 but in June 2004 were released without charge when the Crown Prosecution Service ruled there was insufficient evidence against them. Crime Helen Carter guardian.co.uk
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Iftikhar and Farzana Ahmed will appear in court on Friday, charged with the murder of their daughter The parents of Shafilea Ahmed, the victim of a suspected “honour killing” almost eight years ago, have been charged with murder and appeared before magistrates on Wednesday. Ahmed, 17, disappeared from her home town of Warrington, Cheshire, in September 2003. Her badly decomposed remains were found in February 2004 on the banks of the River Kent in Cumbria, following a flood. She was an intelligent young woman who had hoped to study law at university and become a solicitor. Her inquest heard that the most likely cause of death was strangulation or suffocation. Police said Iftikhar Ahmed, 51, a taxi driver, and Farzana Ahmed, 48, a housewife, of Liverpool Road, Warrington, were arrested on suspicion of murder in September 2010. Cheshire police have now charged both with murder following authorisation by the Crown Prosecution Service. The couple made a six-minute appearance at Halton magistrates’ court in Runcorn, Cheshire, on Wednesday afternoon. They were remanded in custody until Friday, when they will appear via videolink at Manchester crown court. They spoke only to confirm through an interpreter their names, ages and address. The murder charge was put to them, but no plea was entered. There were no submissions made by the prosecution or defence solicitors. The court heard that the couple were charged with murdering the teenager on 11 September 2003 in Cheshire. Iftikhar Ahmed, wearing an open-necked white shirt, gave family members a thumbs-up as he was taken down from the dock. His wife, who spoke through an interpreter, was on the verge of tears. During the hearing Mrs Ahmed stood with her head to one side, and wiped her nose. As she left the dock she signalled to members of her family in the public gallery with a raised finger. At the inquest into Shafilea’s death, Ian Smith, the coroner for south and east Cumbria, recorded a verdict of unlawful killing. The couple have always strenuously denied any involvement in their daughter’s death and once stormed into a police press conference to tearfully protest their innocence, claiming the police were racially motivated. But at the inquest, evidence was heard that Shafilea claimed she was held down and beaten by her parents and was fearful of an arranged marriage. The coroner ruled that she had been the victim of a “very vile murder”. She disappeared shortly after a trip to Pakistan in which she was introduced to a potential suitor. During the trip, she drank bleach and harmed herself in an apparent cry for help, and needed regular hospital treatment to correct injuries to her throat. The coroner said: “Shafilea was the victim of a very vile murder and there’s no evidence before the court as to who did it. There are things people know that have not been told to this court.” He said Shafilea had not had justice. “Her ambition was to live her own life in her own way: to study, to follow a career in the law and to do what she wanted to do. These are just basic fundamental rights and they were denied to her.” Mrs Ahmed was remanded to Styal prison in Cheshire and her husband was remanded to Liverpool prison. The couple were initially arrested on suspicion of kidnapping their daughter in December 2003 but in June 2004 were released without charge when the Crown Prosecution Service ruled there was insufficient evidence against them. Crime Helen Carter guardian.co.uk
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