All language subtitles for Cold Case Killers S01 E02_track3_[eng]

When a murder
is left unsolved...

No weapons, no eyewitnesses,
no forensic evidence at all.

There was nothing.

..And a killer is on the loose...
These people are still out there.

Who's going to be next?

..Britain's cold case
detectives will never give up.

The best way to solve a
cold case is to keep it warm.

No matter how long it takes...
This case dominated my life.

..They'll investigate every
angle and uncover every clue...

Searching through
thousands of people.

They think they've got
away with it, they haven't.

..Until the killer
is caught at last.

We all leave a trace. We'd
finally identified that golden nugget.

Bingo! We've got her.

In 2003, a bright young
teenage schoolgirl suddenly went

missing without a trace.
It was mid-October,

it was sort of an afternoon in
the office and the phone went,

and my boss said, "there's
this case in warrington.

"I'd like you to be part of that
team." So I went and joined that

team. My job was to look at
some of the enquiry side and within

a couple of weeks really, we sort
of reported that this was a big case.

The missing girl was
17-year-old shafilea Ahmed,

whose disappearance had been
reported by a concerned teacher.

Dci geraint Jones, who'd spent
30 years as a murder detective,

had a hunch
something wasn't right.

He immediately built an
experienced team of investigators,

including missing persons
expert, di Dave Edgar.

Obviously, this was... it was a
missing from home investigation.

And as such, we treated it
that way. So we're looking for,

is there a genuine reason
why she'd gone missing?

Has she gone missing before?
We're looking for her friends,

associates, previous relationships,
bank account, any movement on it?

Atm machines, any
movement on them?

Her phone. Cell site
analysis on the phone.

Itemised billing on the phone.

All these things and they're
all looked into meticulously.

There was no activity
on her bank account.

She didn't have a mobile
telephone, which was odd.

She was happy in work, she'd only just gone
back to college to restart her a-levels.

Everything was
looking good for shafilea.

Shafilea's parents' account was she
must have gone off with a boy, or whatever.

Desperate to understand more about
shafilea, dci Jones tracked down the

people who knew her best,
including family friend shahin munir.

We have quite a
tight-knit community

there and the Ahmed family
was part of that community.

Shafilea's younger sister, mehvish,
I knew when we were younger,

when we used to go
to the mosque together.

And I remember shafilea
being this really beautiful girl.

From what I know of her, I know she
grew up to be very bubbly, very fun,

and really had a lot of energy and
a lot of life aspirations about her.

One of my main early goals
were gain more publicity

and seek the help of the public
to see if we could find shafilea.

If she's alive somewhere, someone will have
seen her, let's get in touch and help us out.

Knowing he had to act quickly,
geraint launched a public

appeal that grabbed the
media's attention from day one.

When I walked into this
conference room in warrington,

it was full, absolutely full of
journalists, media, cameras,

and the scale of interest
really shocked me. There was

something about this case that
brought the media out immediately

and it never stopped from there.
Reporting for the guardian in 2003,

journalist Helen Carter
followed every step of the case.

She'd literally just
disappeared into thin air

and it was one of those stories

where you had a lot of
questions about what was going on

and what could possible
have happened to her.

Aware he had to get the
small Muslim community

in warrington on board,

geraint asked the schoolgirl's
family to help with the appeal.

When they initially
tried to have some

sort of help from the family,
they said no straight away.

They said any publicity would
bring shame on that family

and they wanted nothing
to do with any appeal.

When you look at shafilea's
case, you do scratch your head

a little bit and certainly this
is talking 2003 in cheshire,

where our sort of knowledge of
these cultural issues, quite low.

Geraint needed a deeper
understanding of the Pakistani

community, so contacted renowned
criminologist professor Aisha Gill,

a specialist who worked
with south Asian communities.

What I was really interested
in was to explore the family

dynamics within this family.

They had interviewed her
family, her friends, the parents,

and we'd hardly
got any information.

They really hit a
number of brick walls.

I think especially when you
have a tight-knit community, it's

very easy for people to see things
and then, you know, gossip about it.

Far from being the happy
teenager her family suggested,

geraint soon realised that
the 17-year-old's parents had

a reputation within the
close-knit Muslim community.

They would control what
she was wearing, the clothes

she wore to college, what she
would wear outside of the home.

You would have members of
the community calling the parents

to say, "I've just seen
shafilea wearing this."

When she was working, you know,

the money she was earning
would have to be given to the family.

Shafilea wanted to fit in,

she wanted to have friends,
she wanted to be outgoing,

but this didn't quite
sit right with her family

and how they expected her to
behave, as a young Muslim woman.

The control shafilea's parents
have, not only on their children,

but also the wider
family and the community

is astonishing. They want to
control everything their children do,

and have their child act in the
way that they want them to act.

Geraint's team also
uncovered that shafilea had

a history of running away.

There was an instance where
her siblings covered for her

and helped her to escape.

And I know that her friends at
school were trying to help her

as well and I think this was a cycle
where shafilea did want to escape.

So, shafilea could have run away
from home to escape the parents.

It was a possibility.
Got to be open-minded

and work your way through
all the various lines of inquiry.

As geraint dug deeper,
her motives for escaping

became more obvious.

There was stuff coming out from
her former school to say there was

talk of forced marriage and in
fact, shafilea ran away from home

to hide away from that
forced marriage and pressure.

With no sightings of the young girl,
geraint and his team were at a loss.

Then, they discovered there'd
been a recent family trip to Pakistan,

which they suspected was also
linked to an arranged marriage.

Events are a bit unclear, but
what we do know is whilst there,

she drank a caustic substance.

And that really damaged
her oesophagus.

When she returned to the UK,

in that summer, she
was really, really ill.

In fact, she was so ill,
when she got off the plane,

she was taken straight
to warrington hospital,

and she had to have surgery to
treat this oesophageal scarring,

cos she was in a serious state.

It was totally accidental and
that's what she told the doctors here

in the hospital when
she came back as well.

Forgive me, but how do you drink
a bottle of bleach, accidentally?

It was just... she'd mistakenly
taken it as a mouthwash.

All lines of inquiry were
increasingly pointing to the

fact that shafilea
was a runaway,

but geraint knew that if the
schoolgirl was to stay alive,

she'd need to seek
medical help and soon.

There'd been an appeal
already within the medical journals

to say, "here's shafilea, she's
got this medical condition,

"if anyone presents to any sort of
medical areas, can you let us know?"

Within days, he finally got the
breakthrough he'd hoped for.

It found its way to this pharmacy
in Glasgow and they got in touch

to say, "we think we've seen this
girl and here's the cctv footage."

We were hopeful this
girl could now be shafilea.

In 2003, shafilea Ahmed,

a 17-year-old girl from a
conservative Muslim family,

had disappeared, despite a
recent suspected suicide attempt,

leaving her with
life-threatening injuries.

Leading the investigation, dci
geraint Jones had received cctv

from a chemist in Glasgow that
he hoped might be her first sighting.

I made the decision to have

the parents, iftikhar and
farzana, view the video,

and they indicated to the family

liaison officers
that it was shafilea.

They were pretty
confident in that.

And basically were saying,
"is that it now? Do we...?

"Is that the case closed?"

But for dci Jones,
something didn't add up.

But it didn't look right, so
they also showed the video

to her school teacher who
had reported her missing,

and she said it wasn't her.

And it wasn't her, it was a Turkish
girl who'd gone into this pharmacy

for the morning after
pill, and it wasn't shafilea.

Whilst we were still obviously
working our way through

lots of other lines
of inquiry as well,

that was very frustrating.

With time running out
to find shafilea alive,

geraint turned to
the media once more.

We engaged with shobna gulati,

who had been sunita
in coronation street,

she was in a play in
Manchester at the time,

and she agreed to come on
the press conference with us.

Using the well known Asian
actress to read out secret poems

shafilea had written
and hidden away,

geraint hoped to break the
Muslim community's wall of silence.

My strategy there was, use
shobna gulati as a different approach.

She read out shafilea's
poems on the television,

which was pretty emotional for
those that were close to the case.

They are quite hard hitting
poems. "Desire to live is burning,

"my stomach is turning

"but they all think
it's about honour..."

The one real hard hitting
poem was called happy families.

And the last sentence is,
"we are not a happy family."

In a poem called
trapped, shafilea writes,

"I have a burden on my chest
and know it won't go away

"the guilt, the pain."

It's clear that this girl is
having difficulties keeping her

family happy and wanting to live

a westernised
lifestyle in warrington.

It really brought home the suffering
and what this young woman was

going through. It
was incredibly moving.

As geraint got more information
from the community about shafilea's

home life, he became increasingly
concerned for her safety.

When I was friends with mehvish,
she would talk about shafilea

and what she had gone through

and there was a lot of physical
and emotional abuse at home.

She described to me
that there would be

this chair that shafilea
would sit on in the kitchen and

every family member would sit and
watch as shafilea would be beaten.

And this would happen
in front of all of the kids.

With no sightings, but
evidence of domestic violence,

an arranged marriage and
a suspected suicide attempt,

police were now working on a
theory that she could have been

taken to Pakistan against
her will. With time running out,

geraint took the big decision
to bug the family home.

You go through a process
to get intrusive surveillance,

to basically put listening
devices into the house,

to hear what they've got to
say for evidence and intelligence

around what's
happened to shafilea.

There was sufficient case for
the surveillance commissioners

to authorise.

It's rarely done, but on this
occasion, that's what we did.

What geraint heard in the parents'
native punjabi came as a shock.

I was never expecting this couple,
who presented as an ordinary

warrington couple to
be so sophisticated,

in terms of understanding
police techniques.

I thought we'd put
the listening devices in,

we'd hear something that
would really help us find her

and contrary to that, they
were extremely careful.

In fact, they were warning
the children not to talk about it

cos the police
would be listening.

They would have been one step
ahead when it came to the investigation

of these types of cases. Back
then, forced marriage was still

very much misunderstood, but
police were starting to have cases

and therefore, I think the
parents will have known this

and they would have known that
the police were interested in them.

Now geraint knew the parents
were definitely hiding something,

he brought them
in for questioning.

There was evidence
of them controlling her

and taking her away, so we
arrested them both for kidnapping.

We brought in a criminologist
for the investigation to

sort of assist us with elements
that would help open them up.

I was given access to all the
interviews. I was tasked with

analysing the cultural aspects

and the family dynamics
within the Ahmed family.

They gave the impression
that everything was fine,

that they encouraged their
daughters to make their own decisions.

Farzana required an
interpreter throughout,

which sort of doubles
the length of time.

You know, they seemed
to be a very strong pair.

Now, you try and work
one against the other and try

and lead your investigation
through that way as well.

Well, is she a victim, herself?

Or has he got something to say?

There was nothing of, shall
we say, crucial evidence.

We suspected they knew more,
but you can only take it so far.

After 36 hours
in police custody,

the detectives were forced
to release shafilea's parents,

iftikhar and farzana.

With no witnesses, or
any forensic evidence,

their missing persons
case hit a dead end.

We just couldn't find
any trace of shafilea.

Frustrating, yes, but... the
interviews were conducted properly.

Then, on the 4th
of February 2004,

nearly five months after
the schoolgirl disappeared,

a news story from the lake district
caught geraint Jones' interest.

I distinctly remember that morning,
I was driving to warrington police

station, had the local news on every
day, that was my normal behaviour,

and I heard on the
radio that up in cumbria,

there's been a body found
and they don't know who it is,

all the circumstances
of it are a bit unclear.

The body, found after a flood
in the river Kent near sedgewick,

over 70 miles from warrington,

was so decomposed, positive
identification was impossible.

But suspecting it might be
shafilea, geraint asked the family

liaison officer to
inform her parents.

Her father's reaction was
completely unexpected.

He was showing interest
and the flo sort of said,

"he's asking questions,
he's interested about it."

This was the first time the parents
had engaged with the investigation.

It's really interesting that
the parents show much more

reaction to the body being
discovered in cumbria.

This shows that they're
starting to get worried.

This could be the body of
shafilea. To reignite the investigation,

dci Jones needed to be
sure the body was shafilea's.

When we look at iftikhar's
original statements,

describing what shafilea was
wearing when she went missing,

there was quite a lot of matching
to what the body in cumbria had.

So everything
was starting to fit.

I'm starting to think, "this girl in
cumbria could now be shafilea."

Some calls are made
and the initial response is,

"well, she won't be your girl
because this is a white girl.

"The pathologist
says it's a white girl."

It was looking like yet
another blow for the detectives,

until a chance encounter
finally changed their luck.

So, we're getting nowhere
really and then, by coincidence,

a colleague was at a
postmortem over a different case

and the pathologist just
happened to be Alison armour,

who had done the postmortem up
in cumbria, and they got talking and

she said, "I didn't say she wasn't
Asian, I said she wasn't black."

She can't rule out if she
might be an Asian girl.

So then, we raised the inquiry,

to look further into
the body in cumbria.

It was the break geraint and
Dave had been waiting for.

They raced to cumbria to
establish how the body had got there

and what evidence
they could salvage.

We were looking for
debris that was in the river,

we were looking for debris
that had come off the...

Possibly off the body.

The officers were there
for weeks and weeks.

A lot of the body
was still there.

Had the body been
in the river, it would

not have found
its way that intact.

So it was clear that this
body had been put there.

Girls just don't drop
down dead on a river bank.

She obviously hadn't drowned.

But the body was...
You know, at the side.

And the timescales coincide with
how long shafilea had been missing,

from September.

There were several
difficulties that we had,

establishing a cause of death.

Expert opinion was that this
body has been a result of some

sort of asphyxiation.

By the 23rd of February 2004,

the DNA results came back,
confirming that the skeletal

remains did indeed belong
to 17-year-old shafilea Ahmed.

I spent a lot of time with
cheshire police at that time

and I'll never forget that...

..What was a carcass,

an unrecognisable
body found in cumbria.

And it was... It
was really hard.

And that there was no dignity,

that the body had been
found by a river bank.

It was very emotional for all of

us. I remember one of
the team I'd been on this

case from the beginning with
me, gave me a hug and said,

"we've found her now,
we're going to get them."

At that point, with an unidentified
body at the side of the river,

with no apparent cause of
death, to us now knowing that that

body in cumbria is shafilea
- the mind-set changes.

I remember saying
it like yesterday,

is that this is now a
murder investigation.

The pressure was now on
to smoke out shafilea's killer.

First, geraint and Dave had
to establish why the schoolgirl's

asphyxiated body had
ended up over 70 miles away

from her home
town of warrington.

From my police experience,
this was a classic deposition site.

It was well away
from the family home

and research has shown that
if the victim's been murdered

by someone that knows them,

they'll take the body as
physically far away from...

..As they can.

We obviously suspected
she'd been murdered

and the body had
been dumped there.

My view was that someone's
killed her locally in warrington

and decided to get
rid of her up in cumbria.

She didn't end up further
in into the lake district,

she ended up in Sedgwick,

probably cos on that
Thursday night, it was busy.

There'd been the torch lighting
procession, a very busy event,

and the traffic will
have been backing up.

My hypothesis is that the
killer, with the body in the car,

has come up into that traffic
and had to take a turn off

and then the first lay-by is
the first opportunity, really,

along that road where you
could actually get rid of a body.

With shafilea's case
now officially murder,

geraint held another
press conference,

hoping to persuade someone to
come forward and identify the killer.

We've always been
suspicious of the circumstances.

Shafilea's murder
sparked national interest

as a possible so-called
honour killing, with the press

linking her desire to be western
with bringing shame on the family.

The honour killing was the
elephant in the room on this story.

People were asking the police
before the press conference

about honour killing.

This term "honour killing"
is not a term that I've used

here in this enquiry.

I don't wish to comment about
terminology that I haven't used.

But nothing could
prepare the detective

and the assembled press
for what happened next.

That was a big
moment for us all, really.

But what it did do was
bring even more scrutiny,

pressure, public interest.

We haven't invited the
parents to take part today, no.

The parents are very private

and we're respecting
their emotions at this time.

I just remember that
geraint Jones, he was talking,

he was mid-flow, when in
burst shafilea Ahmed's parents.

The grim discovery of a body in
the lake district was the breakthrough

dci Jones needed in the case of
missing teenager shafilea Ahmed.

But he was left stunned when
after months of refusing to engage

with police, shafilea's parents
stormed his police press conference.

I was really surprised to
find iftikhar and farzana

crying in front of the
cameras, accusing us

and their solicitor basically
telling us that we're racist.

That enquiry should be
conducted with transparency,

rather than being based upon
any form of ethnic stereotyping.

It was just the most
uncomfortable...

I saw his face, geraint Jones'
face, just drained of colour.

It was the police's press
conference, it was their moment,

yet they burst in in
this most dramatic way

to kind of put all the
attention back on them.

Iftikhar and farzana
Ahmed have lost a beautiful

and irreplaceable daughter.

The last thing I wanted to do
was be caught on live television

in some sort of discussion
with the suspects.

So I escaped through the
fire exit and drove to warrington

police station and watched
the events on television.

They went from a passive family,

iftikhar and farzana not
wanting anything to do at all,

to an aggressive solicitor-led
approach, in the media,

challenging what we were doing.

The Asian press and
the local community

were behind the parents.

They were saying, look, the
police are not sympathetic,

they are racist.

Within no time, shafilea's parents
began their own press campaign,

continuing to paint
themselves as the victims.

..Suggesting that you
Muslim people do these things.

Do what?

Would we kill our own daughter?

And would you? Never.

As iftikhar and farzana
ramped up their accusations

against the police, geraint
Jones and his team stepped up

their investigation
into the parents,

who were now
their prime suspects.

You follow the evidence
wherever you go

and the evidence is pointing
at events at that house.

Iftikhar is a busy taxi driver,
so part of the investigation was,

let's have a look at his meter
but he'd had that deleted,

so we didn't have
evidence there.

It's not something you
would do as a taxi driver.

Crucially, both geraint
and Dave uncovered that

iftikhar had a reputation amongst
other taxi drivers in the area.

I had some acquaintances
who were taxi drivers

and it's fair to say that iftikhar
was not a popular individual.

Lots of people had their
suspicions that he'd been involved.

There's people that had come
forward and recalled being in a taxi

with him when he
was rude or aggressive.

It's clear that he had a temper.

One taxi driver recalls a
conversation with iftikhar,

well before shafilea was
killed, and in that conversation,

iftikhar actually said to him,
"if I was ever to kill someone,

"I would throw them
in the lake district,

"where they would
never be found."

It was shocking but that's the
mind-set that iftikhar had then.

In April 2004, two months after
the schoolgirl's body had been found,

warrington came to a standstill
when shafilea's funeral was held.

Everybody was just devastated.

The family was devastated.

And I guess in the back of
your mind, you're thinking,

but they could they
have done that?

But it's something you really
don't want to believe is true.

Determined not to
let the case go cold,

dci Jones put his evidence to
the crown prosecution service

for permission to charge mr
and mrs Ahmed with murder.

The barrister's advice to the
cps at that point was it's not quite

reaching the threshold to have
the realistic prospect of conviction.

So we... We didn't have enough.

So we had to go and try
and find some more evidence

and we didn't get
any more evidence.

It isn't very nice to see
people you suspect of murder

just walking down the
street, enjoying their lives.

I think he thought
he was untouchable.

Should have let
us off months ago.

And we shouldn't have actually
been on bail in the first place.

So it's just proven the
point that we've been telling

the truth from day one.

With the parents still on the
loose and no concrete proof,

the investigation was left
dead in its tracks once again.

We just didn't have that
final piece of crucial evidence

to convince the cps.

The case was not
getting anywhere, really.

Over four years after the
discovery of shafilea's remains,

a newly promoted detective
superintendent geraint Jones

gave evidence at an
inquest into her death -

determined to prove his
suspicion that iftikhar and farzana

had murdered the schoolgirl.

The coroner comes to the
verdict that it's an unlawful killing.

That it's a vile murder and
that things going on in shafilea's

home life are probably a
big factor in her murder -

full stop.

But the parents weren't
happy with the inquest's result.

We sat through days of evidence
in cumbria and then her parents,

they wouldn't accept
the unlawful killing verdict.

They absolutely wouldn't accept
it and they actually tried to go

to court to appeal it and
they were unsuccessful

in their bid to
get it overturned.

Hoping the verdict may
finally persuade the cps

to pursue the
parents for murder,

dci geraint Jones was dogged
in keeping the case alive.

I'd make a bit of an appeal
again and there's certain journalists

that followed it and
would put little things out

but we didn't get
anywhere further.

But one of the last sentences
that the qc put on the brief was,

the key moment for any of
this is if you get a new witness,

particular someone from within
the family, that can, you know,

say what's happened,
then you've got a case.

Despite five years of
intense investigation,

the family's wall of
silence had never cracked.

It looked like the end of the road
for geraint Jones and David Edgar.

This was a very, very
difficult case and every...

..Every Avenue that we turned down,
we were getting shut off, basically.

So we were, erm...

..Very frustrated - but
determined to carry on

because we suspected that
she'd been killed in the family home.

It's a sense of bringing
the offenders to justice.

Then, in the summer of 2010,
two years after the inquest

and seven years after
shafilea disappeared,

something happened
at the Ahmed house

that finally blew
the case wide open.

Doorbell rings

alesha was home from
university and that evening,

she had opened the door
to three armed robbers.

You know, they had...
They had masks on.

And the family had been
tied up, apart from alesha.

They all had, I
believe, cable ties

and they had a hammer,
a crowbar and a gun.

And they were all threatened to
be quiet and alesha then had taken

them upstairs, I guess to where
the money and the jewellery was.

When mr and mrs Ahmed
reported the robbery,

they told officers their own
daughter alesha had masterminded it.

22-year-old alesha
was arrested but claimed

she was only taking back money
her parents had stolen from her.

The family were taking
money from her account,

which again, I'm guessing
that she was probably going

the same way as shafilea was.

That she was finding her
feet and mixing with the world

and she'd gone off to university

and perhaps they weren't
satisfied with how she was behaving.

Geraint Jones, who'd led
the investigation into shafilea's

murder from day
one, was on holiday.

Phone rings

I get a phone call
saying, "she's talking",

that's the way I remember
him saying it - "she's talking."

So I knew what he meant, really.

What I didn't really
know is which sibling.

So he said alesha's been
arrested, she's saying

I really need to speak to you
about this stuff that's gone on

and about my sister's murder and
i'm worried about them now doing

stuff to my little
sister that is a repeat

of what was
happening to shafilea.

Obviously my feeling, what
happened, what I was told,

my word was "bingo,
we've got them."

I just knew that that was the final
piece that we were just waiting for.

What alesha told geraint and his
team as her parents had suffocated

her sister shafilea
using a plastic bag

in front of her siblings.

She had basically told us
what we suspected all along -

that she'd been killed
in the family home

and the circumstances
were very, very unpleasant.

With geraint promoted
to another department,

cheshire police brought in a
new senior investigating officer

to push the case through.

But geraint retained
an advisory role

in the case that had
haunted him for seven years.

This... probably the hardest time
for me of the whole case is now,

because I've controlled
this and I really didn't like it

because I had so much
attachment to this case.

But that made it
probably more and more

sensible to have
someone new come in.

Looking back, that
was the right decision.

In September 2011, after
eight years of struggling to prove

shafilea's parents were
responsible for her death,

armed with alesha's
devastating statement,

police finally charged
iftikhar and farzana

with their daughter's murder.

In may 2012, nearly two
years after the robbery,

her parents were put on
trial at Chester crown court.

The disturbing details of
alesha Ahmed's testimony

were shocking beyond belief.

From behind a screen, alesha
described the moment her parents

used a plastic bag to
suffocate shafilea, saying...

I was in court
throughout the trial

and I remember alesha
had heard her mother say

"etay khatam kar",

meaning "finish it here".

And shafilea lost her
struggle for life on that settee

on the night of 11th
September 2003.

Mr Ahmed, did you
murder your daughter?

It was powerful and
emotional testimony

but the fact remained that alesha
had masterminded an armed robbery

against the very people
she was accusing of murder.

Alesha's evidence - dramatic.

So the defence's push
is that she's just lying

and because she set
up a robbery at the house,

obviously there are some
questions about her credibility.

The case against iftikhar and
farzana Ahmed was on a knife edge.

People are just hanging on to
every word, hanging on to every word.

Determined not to give up,

geraint and his team made a
dramatic last-minute discovery

of new evidence that
would prove to be pivotal.

During the trial, we
made contact with shahin

stand shahin arts talking
about her friendship with mevish,

shafilea's other sister, and
she's kept copies of material

that actually corroborates
the alesha account.

I went through a lot of
emotions and it was very difficult.

It was four years that I knew
and I kept hold of these letters.

I didn't tell anybody.
You know, nobody knew.

Too petrified to go
to the authorities,

shahin had kept her dark
secret locked away for years.

Until now.

The case against iftikhar and
farzana Ahmed for murdering

their eldest daughter shafilea was
in danger of collapsing due to the

credibility of the
prosecution's star witness,

shafilea's sister, alesha.

Family friend shahin munir
approached geraint Jones' team

about some explosive new evidence
she'd kept hidden since 2005 -

two years after
shafilea had been killed.

Shafilea's younger sister mevish,
I knew when we were younger,

when we used to go
to the mosque together.

As me and mevish were
speaking more and more,

it became very clear to me
that she was not happy at home,

that she was suffering a lot,

so we had to be very careful
how we communicated.

So I asked mevish whatever
it is that you want to talk about

but you can't, write
it down in a letter.

As soon as I picked up
the letters, I opened them.

There was a few of them
and I read through them.

The letters described in detail
what had happened to shafilea.

She described how
scared she was,

that you were not allowed
to talk about shafilea

and essentially they, mr and
mrs Ahmed, had killed her.

I was shocked.

I was really upset that's actually
what happened to shafilea.

As a young shahin tried to
process what she'd discovered,

mevish demanded that
shahin handed the letters back,

worried her parents
might find out.

It was a very clear that she
was very scared at home.

The night before I was supposed
to meet her to hand them back over,

I made photocopies.

So I wanted to be able
to give her her copies back

but to be able to understand
her and keep hold of it,

in case it would help
her in some... Some way.

In cases of honour-based
violence, the honour

and the behaviour of the child
that could bring shame on the family

is considered more important
than the life of the child.

There's a saying that we all
know, "blood is thicker than water."

In families whose support
honour-based violence,

there's a saying and that is that
"honour is thicker than blood."

So I think it's really
important that we...

..We kind of contest these terms
and the harm that they cause

because there is
no honour in murder.

Emboldened by alesha's bravery
in testifying against her parents,

shahin agreed to share
her copies of the letters

with geraint Jones and his team.

At that point I said,
ok, I know what I know

and it's going to be really
difficult and I still have

these letters and I know
it means that the girl

who I considered my best
friend, that she would hate me.

But what pushed me forward
was knowing this was about shafilea

and you have to do what's right.

Shahin's evidence on
its own was compelling

and added to everything else, it
crushed mr and mrs Ahmed's defence.

It corroborates what is
evidence that could fall over

and the case was
not just based on that.

There was so much
more to this case,

but obviously a key element
was alesha's evidence

and now corroborated
by new evidence.

At last, with the body of
evidence stacked against them,

the previously indestructible
unity end wall of silence crumbled.

Farzana puts forward
a different defence,

basically blaming iftikhar.

According to a statement,
farzana Ahmed said she had seen

her husband attack shafilea.

But that she had tried to stop
him but had been punched by him

with a clenched fist.

It's a very credible account
that she came up with,

clearly a false one but had she
made that account to the police in 2004,

it may well have been that iftikhar
would have been on trial alone.

But the fact is they only
did it to try and get off it

but it didn't work.

On the 3rd August 2012,

after the extraordinary
determination of geraint Jones

and his investigating
team to keep this case alive,

iftikhar and farzana
Ahmed were found guilty

of brutally murdering
their own daughter.

They tried to control her,
to force her into marriage

and to prevent her
from expressing herself.

When this failed,
they murdered her.

Both parents were sentenced
to 25 years in prison.

And that was a really big
moment for everyone in this case.

In all the time I've
done in the police,

there's probably been
no-one braver than alesha

and credit to her
to come forward.

I remember mrs Ahmed didn't
seem to show much of a reaction,

whereas mr Ahmed
swore at geraint Jones

as he was led down to the cells.

And I caught sight
of that, I watched him

because I was
looking for his reaction.

He'd just been sentence
for murdering his daughter

and his first thought was
to swear at the police officer.

Summarised the man, really,

his sheer arrogance and
horrible, horrible behaviour.

As a forensic psychologist,
I work with offenders who do

the most horrific things,
often to people that they love.

What I find really difficult to
understand in this type of case

is that how can families
who love their children

kill them simply because
of their behaviour?

There often isn't that -

it's simply a need
to control their child

and that, for me, is even more
evil than anything I come across.

Justice had been
done in this case.

Absolutely, 100% justice
has been done there.

The case is out of step for me
because it was an absolutely

horrific murder of a young
girl who had her whole life.

And to be taken away from
her in such circumstances,

where her own
parents killed her,

it beggars belief, really.

The legacy of the shafilea
case is that a nine-year journey

that didn't end in
2012, it continues

and that we should never
forget, really, shafilea,

and we should always
remember what it's about.

And, you know, try and
stop any more shafilea cases.

It's so important.

..The horrific murder of two
teenage friends in Edinburgh...

It was kind of like the death
of innocence, a turning point.

..Becomes one of the UK's
longest running cold cases.

We just needed time for
technology to catch up.