London, Aug 4 (IBNS): A couple of Pakistani-descent were served a life sentence by a British court on Friday for murdering their "westernised" teenage daughter in an apparent honour killing.
The Chester Crown Court in Cheshire, north-west England, ruled that Iftikhar Ahmed, 52, and his wife Farzana, 49, will have to serve minimum of 25 years of jail term each for suffocating their 17-year-old daughter Shafilea in 2003.
"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," Justice Roderick Evans
"Your concern about being shamed in your community was greater than the love of your child. You could not tolerate the life that Shafilea wanted to live. You wanted your family to live in Pakistan in Warrington,” Evans told the couple.
The couple, first cousins from the Pakistani village of Uttam, were nailed mainly after a gripping testimony from the victim’s little sister who bravely told jurors how her mother and father suffocated the Shafilea with a plastic bag.
The younger sister Alesha had told the jury that her mother had said, "Just finish it here," as they forced a plastic bag into Shafilea's mouth in front of their other children.
