Shafilea Ahmed's Parents Charged With Her Murder

The parents of Cheshire schoolgirl Shafilea Ahmed, the suspected victim of a so-called honour killing, have been charged with her murder.














A coroner ruled that Shafilea Ahmed was unlawfully killed.

The 17-year-old was last seen in Warrington in September 2003.

Her decomposed remains were found on the banks of the River Kent in Cumbria in February 2004.

Iftikhar Ahmed, 51, and Farzana Ahmed, 48, of Liverpool Road in Great Sankey, Warrington, have always denied any involvement in their daughter's death.

The couple appeared at Halton Magistrates' Court on Wednesday, and were remanded in custody.

They are now due to appear before Manchester Crown Court on Friday.

Mr and Mrs Ahmed were initially arrested on suspicion of kidnapping their daughter in December 2003. In June 2004 they were released without charge when the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) ruled there was insufficient evidence against them.

They were arrested on suspicion of her murder in 2010 and released on police bail.

The CPS authorised Cheshire police to charge the couple on Wednesday.



The CPS authorised Cheshire police to charge Shafilea's parents.

Two post-mortem examinations failed to determine how Ms Ahmed died but a verdict of unlawful killing was recorded at her inquest in 2008.

The inquest heard she was a bright and intelligent young woman who wanted to go to university and become a lawyer.

Pathologists said she was most likely strangled or suffocated and South Cumbria coroner Ian Smith said he believed she was probably murdered.

The teenager went missing on 11 September 2003 and was reported missing by a teacher a week later.

Her body was discovered by workmen and she was identified by her jewellery and dental records.

Boy, 16, Charged Over Kilmarnock Schoolboy Murder

A teenager appeared in court last night charged with killing a schoolboy at the weekend.

The 16-year-old, from Kilmarnock, was charged with murder over the death of 13-year-old Jon Wilson.

The schoolboy, from Gateside Place in Kilmarnock, was found with serious head injuries and was left fighting for his life after the attack in Queen's Drive in Kilmarnock in the early hours of Sunday morning.
















Victim: A 16-year-old, from Kilmarnock, was charged with murder over the death of 13-year-old Jon Wilson, pictured in a sailor's hat.

He died at Crosshouse Hospital yesterday. His family are said to be 'devastated' at his death, a neighbour said.

Hundreds of Facebook messages have also been posted online paying tribute to the schoolboy.

Jon's aunt Irene Wilson paid tribute to her nephew.












Tragedy: Jon Wilson died at Crosshouse Hospital, Kilmarnock, pictured, with his devastated family at his side.

She told the Daily Record: 'Jon was a quiet boy who spent most of his time playing with his Xbox. He didn't run in gangs or bring any bother to his door.

'He was a generous boy and he would give you his last.'













Cathy Jamieson, Scottish Labour MP for Kilmarnock, said: 'This is such a tragic waste of a young life'.

She said the family, who were at his bedside when he died, had 'no idea' why he was in the street at that time of night.

The 16-year-old made no plea and no declaration when he appeared at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court and was remanded in custody. No date was fixed for his next appearance.

Gillian Cochrane, a neighbour of the Wilson family, said Jon's death was a 'tragedy'.

'His family are devastated,' she said.

Pupils at Kilmarnock Academy, where Jon was a student, are being offered counselling over the schoolboy's death.

An East Ayrshire Council spokeswoman said: 'Our thoughts are presently with his family and friends, to whom we extend our sincerest condolences.'

Cathy Jamieson, Scottish Labour MP for Kilmarnock, said: 'This is such a tragic waste of a young life.

'My thoughts are with the family of the victim and members of the Kilmarnock community who are as shocked as I am that such a terrible incident could take place on the town's streets.'


















In court: The 16-year-old charged made no plea and no declaration when he appeared at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court and was remanded in custody.

New Libya May Refuse To Extradite Yvonne Fletcher Murder Suspect

Diplomat suspected of killing police officer in 1984 at London embassy could escape extradition, but might be tried in Libya.












Police officers try to revive PC Yvonne Fletcher after she was shot outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984 during an anti-Gaddafi protest. Libyan officials say the suspect might not be extradited.

The justice minister of the Libyan rebels' National Transitional Council (NTC) said on Friday a post-Gaddafi government would "not give any Libyan citizen to the west", in an apparent blow to British hopes of putting on trial the suspected killer of Yvonne Fletcher, the police officer shot dead 27 years ago outside the Libyan embassy.

Mohammed al-Alagi also ruled out the return to the UK of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing but released in 2009 on compassionate grounds.

"Al-Megrahi has already been judged once and he will not be judged again," he told journalists in Tripoli. "We do not hand over Libyan citizens, [Muammar] Gaddafi does."

Alagi added: "We will not give any Libyan citizen to the west," a comment that appeared to rule out the extradition of the man suspected of shooting Fletcher in 1984.

Earlier on Sunday, the foreign secretary, William Hague, played down suggestions that the NTC would not work with British officials in their the hunt for her killer. He said: "When chairman [Mustafa Abdel] Jalil … was with us in London in May he committed himself and the council to co-operating fully with the British government on this issue."

Hague was responding to a report in the Sunday Times that quoted two NTC officials saying nobody would be sent to the UK to face trial for Fletcher's killing.

"Libya has never extradited or handed over its citizens to a foreign country. We shall continue with this principle," said Hassan al-Sagheer, a member of the NTC.

Another NTC member, Fawzi al-Ali, was quoted as saying: "According to our laws, no one can be handed over unless there are special agreements to do so."

A spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said that, at present, Libyan law prohibits the extradition of its own citizens. It does, however, allow for its nationals to be tried in Libya for crimes committed overseas.

Guma el-Gamaty, the NTC's UK co-ordinator, took part in the anti-Gaddafi protest that Fletcher was policing when she was shot.

He distanced himself from the views expressed by Sagheer and others, insisting on Sunday that it was too early to draw any conclusions. "Nobody can rule out anything at the moment; the possibility [of a British trial] is there," he said. "But first of all investigations need to be concluded. Somebody has to be identified as the killer … Obviously everyone wants justice; it's just a matter of when and how and whether the actual killer has been identified."

Gamaty added that, as with the Fletcher case, the issue of an eventual return to Scottish jail for Megrahi was "a decision for a future Libyan government". The whereabouts of Megrahi, who was given a hero's welcome when he returned to Libya two years ago, are unknown.

No one has ever been charged for killing Fletcher, who was 25 when officials inside the Libyan embassy opened fire on the anti-Gaddafi protesters outside.

Embassy staff were subsequently allowed to leave Britain, but diplomatic ties with Libya were severed.

Those seeking justice for Fletcher, however, were given a boost on Friday when it emerged that the Crown Prosecution Service had heard a witness account that identified a junior diplomat, Abdulmagid Salah Ameri, as the possible gunman.

On Saturday, the international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, said the emergence of a new suspect would be raised with the NTC. The government would, he said, be pursuing the case "in every way we can".

Family Feud That Turned Wedding Into Bloodbath

Turkish leaders condemn 'tradition' that led to the village massacre of 44 people who had gathered to celebrate marriage.

The sheep had been slaughtered and cooked, the women had daubed their hands orange with henna, the children were decked out in their best clothes.

The night was supposed to be a time of celebration for the inhabitants of Bilge, a Kurdish village set in the hills of south-east Turkey. Relatives had gathered to hear the former village chief Cemil Celebi give his consent to the marriage of his 20-year-old daughter, Sevgi. There was supposed to be dancing, laughter and prayers for the future of the young bride and groom.

But just after 9pm, as men and women filed into separate rooms for prayers, masked assailants forced their way into the green-painted house and opened fire with machine guns.










A wounded person is taken to the hospital after an attack in a village near the city of Mardin.

"The village imam was at the head of the room, a young man from Ankara, and the village men were lined up behind him on their prayer mats," one resident recounted. "They were mown down in rows." Another recalled: "They shot through the windows and the door. The people inside had no chance."

A 20-year-old girl who survived by hiding under a bed described a similar scene in the women's room. "They started spraying the place with bullets," she told Turkish television. When the attackers had finished, they cold-bloodedly began inspecting the bodies to make sure everybody was dead.

"We cannot believe what we have been through," said Bedia Akbulut, the wife of the village teacher, who has lived in Bilge for four years. She and her husband Sadik were lucky not to be among the dead. On good terms with the Celebis, they had been invited to attend the ceremony. Then Sadik had overslept. "When we heard gunshots, my husband immediately switched off the lights," his wife said.

The shooting lasted no more than 10 minutes. When it had finished, the couple rushed across to the Celebis' house, and into a bloodbath. Forty-four people, including the bride, a baby and five young children, were dead. Another six were injured. In fact, with the exception of the 20-year-old hiding under the bed, only one person survived unharmed, a high-school student who hid under the body of his brother.

By the end of Monday night's attack, a quarter of the population of Bilge had been wiped out. Turkish officials announced yesterday that they had caught and detained eight people after one of the worst attacks involving civilians in the modern history of Turkey.

Breathing an audible sigh of relief that this was not the work of Kurdish separatists, whose murder of ten Turkish soldiers last week has left fragile hopes of peace looking ever more shaky, officials were swift to link the killings to the diehard tribal customs of some parts of the Kurdish south-east.

"This can be understood as a blood feud between two families," Interior Minister Besir Atalay told a news conference. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan added his condemnation: "No kind of tradition can justify this killing, no conscience can justify this kind of pain." So did President Abdullah Gul. "Such a primitive cruelty that opened deep cuts in our conscience is inexplicable," he said in a statement. "Everybody should think seriously about tradition, blood feuds and animosity standing before human life."

Unnamed residents in Bilge said the killings had been carried out by one part of the Celebi family, as revenge for one of their sons being passed over as the groom in favour of another man, Habip Ari.

Turkish television reported that one person had died back in the early 1990s, when a blood feud had erupted between the family of Mr Ari, and the assailants' family. The feud had eventually been patched up, but Cemil Celebi's choice of groom for his daughter may have reopened old wounds.

Yet many analysts said they were unconvinced by efforts to explain the Bilge bloodbath with tired old clichés about misogynistic feudalism and the irremediable backwardness of the Kurdish people. Blood feuds, they pointed out, rarely result in the deaths of more than three or four people, let alone 44. And furthermore, while tribes have no qualms about butchering women deemed to have sullied the honour of the family, the mass murder of women and children as they pray is in complete violation of standard tribal law.

What may have aggravated the violence is the government's Village Guards programme, set up in 1985 to create and arms local militia to fight alongside state security forces against the Kurdistan Workers Party. Critics despair of the vast quantities of weapons that the state-sponsored initiative has pumped into the region.

Back in Bilge, residents were still reeling from the shock. "I am ashamed to be from here, this is brutality, it is like a natural disaster," Mahmut Yildiz told Reuters. "I don't know how we will be able to live in peace."

Apart from the wind, the only sounds to be heard was the chug of four bulldozers digging mass graves for the dead, and – from a field behind the graveyard – the high-pitched dirges of the Kurdish women. The men, meanwhile, were at the local hospital morgue, waiting for their relatives' bodies to be released. When they return, Cemil Celebi's backyard, decked out for a wedding, will be put to use for a wake.