Ex-husband of Brit beauty therapist Samia Shahid ‘admits murder’ of the 28-year-old in brutal honour killing in Pakistan
Father of Brit Samia also appears in court following her death in Pakistan last month
THE ex-husband of a British woman killed in a suspected honour-killing in Pakistan has admitted strangling her, it has been reported.
Chaudhry Shakeel is believed to have admitted he killed Samia Shahid, 28, before he appeared in court alongside her father.
Geo News reported that he told police in a recorded interview: "I strangled Samia to death using a dupatta (a long scarf)."
Samia's father Mohammed Shahid appeared in court accused of being an accessory to her murder.
Both were remanded in custody in the northern city of Jhelum.
Shahid, of Bradford, was visiting family in the Punjab village of Pandori last month when she died.
Investigators believe she was strangled and stabbed, but her family was initially told she died from a heart attack.
A second post-mortem later revealed she had been strangled.
Her second husband Syed Mukhtar Kazam, who lived with her in Dubai, believes she was murdered for marrying outside the family.
Relatives told him she died of a sudden heart attack or asthma attack after she was buried in a village graveyard.
Pakistan cops claimed a quick post-mortem was carried out and have found no visible injuries or signs of violence on her body.
But Mr Kazam, who married her at Leeds Town Hall in September 2014, says she was killed by her family because they refused to accept her marrying an ‘outsider’.
A full investigation into her death only began after Mr Kazam raised the alarm with friends in the UK.
Bradford MP Naz Shah demanded that Pakistani authorities exhume her body and commission an independent postmortem.
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Local police chief Jehlum Mujahid Akbar admitted the death of Samia, from Bradford, was "not due to natural causes".
Regional Police Officer Wisal Fakhar Sultan Raja said: “The accused are arrested and after interrogations we hope to find out the truth.
“The post-mortem report that saliva was oozing out of her mouth and she had wound mark on her neck indicates she was suffocated to death.
“Since the wound mark is fresh and dated at the time of death there is little doubt she has been killed.”
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