Former husband confessed to murder of UK national, says police

Shakeel who was also Shahid’s first husband confessed to drugging and killing her, saying the other named suspects in the case were innocent.

However, why he killed his former wife could not be confirmed.

Earlier, a forensic report on Shahid’s death had revealed that Shahid neither committed suicide, nor she died a natural death.

In fact, she had died of asphyxia after her breathing was choked, which hinted the investigators she was murdered.

Based on the forensic report, police arrested Shahid’s father, Shakeel and a cousin.

Samia Shahid, 28, a beautician from Bradford who had gone to visit her family in Pakistan, died last month in the village of Pandori in northern Punjab, the political power base of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

The second husband of the British national, Mukhtar Kazam, had called for the UK and Pakistani governments to ensure his wife received justice, as he sought to keep the spotlight on so-called “honour” killing.

Kazam has nominated Shakeel in Samia’s murder case and is now in police custody.

At an emotional press conference late July, Kazam had shown a copy of the post-mortem report into his wife’s death, which said she had marks on her neck.

He had asked the British and Pakistani governments to conduct a fair trial in her wife case.

Kazam and Shahid, both British-Pakistani dual citizens, had been married for two years and were living in Dubai.

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He had also blamed Shahid’s parents of being involved in her death since she converted to Shia Islam, his sect, before their wedding, which had irked her parents.

Samia Murder Case

The case appeared in the mainstream media when British MP Naz Shah directly demanded the Pakistani government an independent autopsy after Shahid’s husband seemed positive that her family killed her for marrying him who was seen as an ‘outsider.’

Soon police in Britain started looking into the new case of Shahid, who died in Pakistan on July 13.

Shah had asked Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to intervene and play his role in the murder probe

In a letter written to Sharif, she had asserted, “Should this be [an honour killing] case then we must ensure justice is done for Samia and we must ensure this never happens again.”

Syed Mukhtar Kazam, also a Pakistani national has always been claiming that his wife’s family was against their “love marriage” in September 2014 but she moved to live with him in Dubai in May 2015.

Before her marriage with Kazam, Shahid had left her first husband who was also her cousin from her village in Pakistan.

She had been back to Bradford twice in the past year to convince her parents to accept her marriage, the British MP continued in her letter.

Kazam said he was shocked to know that his wife suffered a critical heart attack, as earlier claimed by Shahid’s family when she was in Pakistan to see an ailing relative.

She was buried after post-mortem and the samples from her body were sent to a forensics lab in Lahore.