By Helen Pidd
 |
Samia
Shahid returned from
who
were unhappy with her marriage, a friend said.
Photograph:
Supplied by Syed Mukhtar Kazam
|
A
British woman who died in Pakistan Bradford , West Yorkshire
police have confirmed.
Samia
Shahid, 28, who died in uncertain circumstances in Pakistan Bradford in September to try to patch things up with
members of her family who were unhappy she had married an “outsider” from a
different Islamic sect, friends said.
Shahid
had been living in Dubai
A
friend, who asked not to be named, told the Guardian that Shahid returned from Dubai
She
asked a female police officer to chaperone her to the family home in Manningham,
Bradford, after being harassed by one of her relatives, who wanted her to
return to her first marriage.
A
spokesman for West
Yorkshire police
said on Tuesday: “Police can confirm that they attended an address in Bradford last September, where the victim was
subjected to harassment. The offender received a warning and the victim was
informed of the action taken.
“West Yorkshire police is continuing to liaise with the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office in relation to the death in Pakistan
Police
would not confirm which family member received the harassment warning.
The
MP for Bradford West, Naz Shah, has demanded Shahid’s body be exhumed and an
independent postmortem carried out. Shahid’s family have told the Guardian she
died from either an asthma attack or a heart attack, but her second husband
alleges foul play, believing she was the victim of an “honour” killing.
An
initial postmortem was inconclusive, Pakistani police told the Guardian. Her
internal organs have been sent to Lahore
The
Guardian has seen a witness statement submitted to Pakistani police by Shahid’s
father, Mohammed Shahid, in which he refers to his daughter’s husband as her
cousin Mohammed Shakeel, not Kazam.
Shahid’s
father maintains his innocence. Reached by phone in Pakistan
Three
of Shahid’s friends in Britain Bradford . One had already given a witness statement
to West Yorkshire police and the others said they would do so
imminently.
One
woman, who asked to be named as Annie Shah, said she became close friends with
Shahid in the run-up to her second wedding, when she was converting from being
a Sunni to a Shia, a different denomination of Islam followed by Kazam.
Some
of Shahid’s family were very unhappy about the conversion, which meant she
attended a different mosque. Annie Shah said: “They didn’t like that he was not
only not part of the family but also wasn’t a Sunni.”
Annie
Shah said she had first known Shahid when she was still unhappily married to
her cousin, Mohammed Shakeel, and living in Pakistan
She
said Shahid was very happy with Kazam, whom she called Ali, and was trying to
get pregnant when she died. “She loved her husband so much. She was madly in
love with him.”
Another
friend, who said she had known Shahid for six years in Bradford , remembered the incident last September when
Shahid returned home chaperoned by a police officer. “They had kicked her out
of the house so she came back with a woman police officer.”
The
family strongly deny Kazam’s claims that he feared she had been killed by her
family. Her father said the allegations made by Kazam were “lies and
allegations” against him. “An investigation is under way and if I am found
guilty I am ready for every kind of punishment,” he said. “My daughter was
living a very peaceful and happy life. She had come to Pakistan
“This
is a terrible tragedy but she died of natural causes,” said Mohammed Ali, a
cousin in Bradford . “The family did a postmortem. There’s no
evidence whatsoever of murder.” He disputed Kazam’s claim of marriage, referring
to him as “that boy, Samia’s so-called husband”.