The second husband of a Bradford beauty therapist raped and murdered in a suspected honour killing has spoken for the first time in a haunting documentary exploring her final months.
Samia Shahid, a Muslim, was 28 when she was allegedly raped and strangled by her ex-husband and cousin Mohammed Shakeel while visiting relatives in Punjab, Pakistan, in the summer of 2016. Her father stands accused of helping him.
Now Syed Mukhtar Kazam, who she married in 2014 after secretly seeking a divorce from the abusive Shakeel, has told of his belief that his wife’s relatives deliberately lured Samia from the couple’s new home in Dubai to Pakistan by telling her her father was gravely ill – all the while knowing what awaited her.
In the BBC show Murdered for Love? Mukhtar recalls his ‘helpless’ fear as he dropped his wife at the airport ahead of her ‘fatal’ trip to Pakistan to join her apparently ailing father and the rest of her family, who were in the country for a funeral. Six days later, she was dead.
Eight days later both Samia’s first husband and her father were arrested in connection with her murder.
Samia’s uncle told the BBC that her relatives deny all of the allegations.
Grieving Mukhtar reveals on the show how his wife had been desperate for forgiveness from her family – who made no secret of their shame over the breakdown of her first, arranged marriage.
‘How could a father do that to his daughter?’ he asks of the fateful decision to send Samia to Pakistan to marry her cousin.
‘He raised up a child all his life, loved and cared so much for the child, and finally he just decides that she’s no more his daughter – but a cow to go the market and sell.’
Samia Shahid with her second husband Syed Mukhtar Kazam, who she moved to Dubai to live with in 2015 – she was killed in July 2016 in an alleged honour killing
Muhktar spoke to the BBC in a documentary looking over his wife’s last months alive – he believes that Samia was lured to her death by her family
In the wake of her death Samia’s case was taken up by Bradford MP Naz Shah, who wrote to the Prime Minister of Pakistan describing the case as an honour killing.
It’s estimated that almost 1,000 women are murdered in Pakistan each year for violating conservative norms around love, marriage and public behaviour.
Finding love
Samia had first met Muhktar in 2013 after returning to the UK from Pakistan following her first wedding the previous year, in an effort to help secure a visa for Shakeel, who remained in Punjab.
The couple fell in love while she was still married.
Messages sent from Samia to her friends revealed in the documentary offer an insight into her changing state of mind – from her unhappiness while living in Pakistan with her first husband, during which time she sent them photos of bruises inflicted upon her, to the giddy voice notes she sent during the early
Her friends knew about the romance and say that they were pleased she had finally found love with Mukhtar, who split his time between the UK and Dubai.
In May 2014, Samia approached a local Imam to ask for a divorce under Sharia Law, and in September 2014, she and Mukhtar married in a secret ceremony on what he describes as one of the ‘happiest days of his life’.
Samia’s parents were horrified by the break down of her first, arranged marriage, and explosive arguments left Samia feeling ‘like a prisoner in her own home’.
Samia’s parents arranged a marriage between her and her cousin Shakeel when she was 25, she moved to Pakistan to live with him but she was unhappy in the relationship
Eventually, by May 2015, Samia made the decision to join her husband Muhktar in Dubai.
The couple were eager to become parents, but Muhktar says the breakdown of her relationship with her parents weighs heavily on Samia.
‘She had the best of this world… She wanted the best of that world. But things didn’t work out the way she wanted it,’ he says on the show.
Seeking forgiveness
Mukhtar says that his was desperate to mend her relationship with her mother and father – but claims her father begged him to leave Samia, so that she could return to Pakistan.
When her aunt – and the mother of her first husband Shakeel – died, a devastated Samia wanted to return to Punjab to pay her respects.
Having been persuaded not to make the trip by her anxious second husband, Samia then began to receive messages from her sister and mother – who had flown to Pakistan for the funeral – claiming that her diabetic father was gravely ill, Mukhtar says.
‘She got another phone call saying “what if your father dies?”. She was just out of control, she wanted to get to Pakistan to see her father,’ he recalls.
A police report issued in the wake of Samia’s death indicates that Samia’s mother Imtiaz and sister Madiha are accused of ’emotionally blackmailing’ her into making the trip to Pakistan, and are wanted on suspicion of ‘abetting the murder’.
Madiha and her older sister allegedly exchanged 15 calls in as many days, with Madiha ‘crying’ and saying that their father was perilously ill in hospital.
Samia’s mother Imtiaz ‘also painted a grim picture of her father’s condition on telephone’, the report says, and ’emotionally blackmailed her daughter to plan her fatal trip to Pakistan’.
Lured to her death
Samia had told her worried friends in the UK she intended to join her family in Pakistan, because she would never forgive herself if her father died.
But one friend says Samia was worried by the lack of reassurances around the nature of the trip: ‘It showed she feared for her life and she had no guarantees that she was going to come back.’
Muhktar drove his wife to the airport after her sister sent her a plane ticket to Pakistan.
‘I was really upset about it,’ he says. ‘I was helpless. What could I have done?’
‘[Was I] going to face her for the rest of our lives knowing that her father was not well and I stopped her [from going] and something happened to him? I had to let her go. [But] I stopped my car and said “you still have time”.
‘She hugged me and said “nothing is going to happen to me, I still have time”. And that was the last time [I saw] her.’
When her friends realised she had gone they were horrified.
‘It shocks me, she wasn’t a daft girl,’ one says on the show.
Another agrees: ‘That is the question, why did she go? Why?’
Samia had found happiness with Muhktar following her marriage to Shakeel – she had divorced him without her parents knowledge and they had rejected her
Six days after she flew to Pakistan Samia’s death was reported, and initially her family told Muhktar that she had suffered a heart attack.
‘I thought maybe this is one of the dirty games they were playing… I thought they would torture her,’ he says. ‘I still had a hope she would be alive and I could find her.’
Forensic evidence revealed that she been raped and then died from suffocation.
Police in Pakistan eventually arrested Shakeel and Samia’s father in connection with her death – her ex-husband confessed that he had strangled her with a scarf.
However any confessions obtained under arrest in Pakistan are not admissable in criminal proceedings.
Shakeel is currently detained in prison on suspicion of murder and rape and is awaiting trial. Samia’s father has been released due to a lack of evidence to support his involvement.
Her mother and sister are believed to have fled Pakistan in the wake of Samia’s death, and are thought to be in Britain.
Samia’s uncle told the BBC that the family denies all allegations.
Murdered for Love? Samia Shahid airs on BBC Two at 9pm on Tuesday 30 January
WHO WAS SAMIA SHAHID? THE BRADFORD BEAUTY THERAPIST MURDERED IN AN ALLEGED HONOUR KILLING
Samia Shahid, 28, was the victim of an honour killing
A British Muslim allegedly raped and murdered in an honour killing was lured to her death in Pakistan by her mother and sister who lied and said her father was dying, court papers claim.
Samia Shahid, 28, from Bradford, was allegedly the victim of a ‘devious plan’ by her family who wanted her dead because she left the cousin she was forced to marry.
Police in Pakistan have accused her father Mohammad Shahid and first husband Mohammad Shakeel of murder and prosecutors want the death penalty if they are convicted.
But a final report on her death shows that Samia’s mother Imtiaz and sister Madiha are accused of ’emotionally blackmailing’ her to visit Pakistan and are wanted on suspicion of ‘abetting the murder’.
Madiha and her older sister allegedly exchanged calls 15 in as many days, with Madiha ‘crying’ to say that their father, who has diabetes, was perilously ill in hospital.
Samia’s mother Imtiaz ‘also painted a grim picture of her father’s condition on telephone’, the report says, and ’emotionally blackmailed her daughter to plan her fatal trip to Pakistan’.
She was then convinced to come to Pakistan from Dubai, where she lived with her second husband, Syed Mukhtar Kazim.
Her family initially tried to get her to fly to Pakistan after her aunt died – but she refused so they then hatched a plan using her father’s health, it is claimed.
Mother and daughter were allegedly allowed to flee the country before arrest by a local police inspector, who failed to seize their passports and has since been arrested.
28-year-old Samia landed in Pakistan on July 15 but just days later she was allegedly brutally raped and murdered.
Court papers claim that after arriving at her ancestral village in the Punjab her first husband Mohammed Shakeel was ordered by her father to watch her at all times.
On July 20, the day before she was due to return to her husband in Dubai, she refused to tell Shakeel where her passport and plane ticket were kept.
‘Shakeel then, after terrorizing her, threw her on the bed and committed rape’, the report says.
A Pakistani police officer, second right, escorts father Muhammad Shahid, right, and ex-husband Muhammad Shakeel of slain British-Pakistani woman Samia Shahid
Samia then rushed out of the room and said she would go straight to the British High Commission.
Her father Mohammed Shahid was on a veranda and met them at the bottom of the stairs where she told him she was leaving.
The court report claims ‘Shahid gave Shakeel a nod’ and ‘Shakeel started to strangle her with her scarf whereas Shahid held her legs, killing her within a short span of time’.
The family then allegedly carried out a ‘cover up’, claiming she died of natural causes, and she was quickly buried in the village cemetery.
But her current husband Syed Mukhtar Kazim became suspicious and flew to Pakistan and went to the police, who would later arrest her father and first husband.
Her sister and mother were allegedly allowed to flee Pakistan on July 27 thanks to a police officer who ignored orders to seize their passports. They are believed to be in Britain.
Police in Pakistan hoping to extradite accused Madiha and Imtiaz Bibi will need to obtain arrest warrants as the pair are in the UK.
The court papers called for the extradition of the two women to be started via the Ministry of Interior. Arrests warrants may be issued through Interpol.
Samia’s mother and sister could not be found at their comfortable four storey home in Bradford, West Yorkshire, and are believed to be living elsewhere in the city.
Samia’s ex-husband has been refused bail and is accused of murder, her father has been released on bail and is accused of helping, something which he has strongly denied.