Murdered for Love? Samia Shahid

SINGING AND LAUGHING

Show me your mehndi, put your arms out. Other way.

It's like she got ready for a grand wedding.

She was so happy, full of smiles.

She said, "Oh, I feel like a princess."

This programme contains very strong language and some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

She just wanted to be happy. She wasn't asking for the world.

I really don't know why she went to Pakistan.

It just shocks me. Like, she wasn't a daft girl.

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.

"Your Excellency, the Prime Minister of Pakistan,

"I am writing to you to bring to your attention a very serious

"allegation of an honour killing of a British citizen."

This case does fit that classic picture

and circumstances of an honour killing.

We're here to speak for her, because we know what she was like.

Because today, if we let this go with Samia, it could be anybody.

We are her voice, speaking for her today,

because I know she would have done the same.

Hey, you all! I love you all! Mwah!

She used to describe herself as tall, dark and handsome.

She was a just a Bradford girl.

Into her fashion, into how she looks.

Today I want to straighten and blow dry my hair. I've got nothing to do.

If I'm sat down, I'm thinking about food!

She was lively, bubbly, happy, smiling, laughing, joking...

Tall, beautiful, stunning.

She was a trendsetter, really. We used to copy her.

Minions!

She just wanted to be around people that loved her.

I could be upsetting anybody today

because it's such a sensitive matter within our community.

It's like something you can't even talk about openly.

Me, Nusba and Samia, we just always used to chill.

We were so free with each other,

and we could speak about literally anything.

She was cool.

We used to call her Samia Masee.

"Masee" means, like, your mum's sister.

She was a lot older than us,

only like five or six years, but she was such a big kid.

Like, she was a little wild one.

She used to love cars.

She loved driving.

But she wasn't allowed to drive.

Maybe that was their way of controlling exactly what

she could do, or where she could go.

Can you believe it?

Her family own a limousine place, a car hiring company.

She wasn't allowed a car!

She used to hire a car undercover.

That's how much lock-down she was on.

She's really like a crazy boy driver.

She was just living wild, reckless. She didn't care.

"This is what I am. What you see is what you get."

It was like... It's almost like she knew that her life-span

is quite short.

There's a lot of pressure in Bradford.

Because her family are so well-known there's a lot of pressure.

She loved her family.

Out of everyone in the family, she was closest to her dad.

The family is quite a big family.

Her mum has got, like, five brothers.

Her uncle owns a fish and chip shop,

one owns the florist,

one owns a car rental business,

so they are very well-known.

She loved her family. From her cousins, to her cousin brothers,

her cousin brothers' kids, she loved them all.

She never used to work.

Her dad used to, like, finance her.

She was Daddy's girl. Whatever she wanted, she got.

If her dad used to say anything, it's like she could not disagree.

She melted.

Her family is so complicated from any other family that I know.

Like, we've come from Asian families and we don't have that,

but she had it on another level.

The Pakistani values are, whatever happens, family comes first,

no matter how much they shit on you.

It's family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family,

and it's never going to end.

You want their approval at the end, no matter what decision you make.

Whether it's wrong or right, but for them to say,

"Yeah, it's OK, we're going to support you in this."

She actually loved her family so much

that she couldn't be open with them, ever.

Everything was a secret.

She was always like, "I love my dad, I'd do anything for my dad".

You know, "my dad's word's law",

and maybe that's why she actually went

and she married her father's choice in the first place.

What started happening was,

because her mum and my mum were really close,

her mum used to say to my mum, you know, "You talk to Samia,

"she listens to you, ask her to come to Pakistan and get married."

And that's when she opened up to us

saying she's not happy with this marriage.

From day one, she was not happy.

Shakeel's her first cousin.

Yeah, he's her first cousin, she had to marry him.

These Pakistanis think that, to keep the land back home in the family

that you should marry first cousins.

So the family inheritance is good.

It's like basically winning the lottery, but self-made.

Her mum give birth to her, and her dad helped to make her,

so she's property now.

All your life, you've been choosing what you want to wear,

how you want to do your hair, how you want to portray yourself,

then all of a sudden, when you want to choose person to marry,

all of a sudden, snap.

It's like... It's like a mind game.

They know they've got you where they want you,

because they'll make you marry who they choose.

You won't have your choice.

Basically, it was just a marriage that had been arranged,

and she kind of agreed to it.

They went shopping with her, made sure she, like,

got everything got everything, whatever she liked.

They went up to Pakistani Bazaar and bought an outfit from there.

They did pay for everything, but she wasn't happy.

She knew that money could not buy happiness.

She just had to go along with it.

We dropped her off to the airport. She was totally heartbroken.

She was like, "This journey's just getting faster and faster."

I still remember she said that when she was sat on the plane.

Before she was going to take-off, she texted me saying,

"I can't believe this is actually happening."

She felt suffocated.

It's like you're losing yourself, it's like there's something

over you that's possessing you to listen to them,

but you're not following your heart,

and then you're stuck in the middle of both worlds.

I wasn't there physically with her, but I was always on the phone,

texting, voice mails.

She was telling me what's happening today, what's happened now,

what's going to happen.

Everyone went from here, so it was like a big wedding,

obviously she didn't want to marry him,

but she did it because she didn't want, you know,

to make, like, a laughing stock out of her family.

From her parents' point of view,

they were doing the right thing by her.

You know, you bring up your daughter,

you want her to be married in a good home.

You know, for her to make a life for herself.

Her mum and dad were cousins before they got married.

So she listened to her parents,

and it's just, sort of, just a circle that goes on and on.

My mum and dad are Pakistani, but I'm not.

I'm from the UK.

How can I change all of a sudden?

How can I be the villager from back home?

He knew she didn't want to marry him,

why couldn't he be the bigger person and say, "You know what?

"If she doesn't want to spend the rest of her life with me, I shouldn't marry her."

You know, he could have helped her, he's her cousin.

You know, he's known her since she's been a kid.

How can you marry someone that doesn't want to marry you?

Like, it's disgusting.

I don't want to say it, but it's disgusting, isn't it?

Every girl imagines to be with the perfect guy, have the perfect life.

But she... She didn't get that.

She just blocked the whole fact that she was going to get married,

and then she just let it be.

She just got married, and she just couldn't wait to come back.

She was a really good girl, and she tried to make her marriage work.

That's why her family say, "Oh, she was happy."

No, that was all fake. She was trying to be happy.

Do you know, with her, she's not a depressed sort of person.

She was doing it for the sake of her dad.

So it's not like she didn't give it her best shot.

She just thought, "Do you know what? Let's see."

She just thought, "We'll give it a chance."

It just did not bring her happiness.

She wasn't happy. The main thing was happiness for her.

She wasn't happy, how could she live the rest of her life?

Was she different when she came back from Pakistan?

She didn't change towards her friends,

but she became bitter towards her family.

She became really bitter towards them.

Well, she came back. She was, like, really low key.

I remember, she wasn't allowed out much.

And then we started talking, and she used to tell us she hates it.

She always used to be sad.

I'd go over to her house and he'd be on Skype to her.

And I'd be like, "Doesn't he ever give you a break,

"to be with your friends, or your family?"

She used to be like, "No, no."

She used to be like, "No, he doesn't.

"He just always wants to be on my tail."

That was her words "my tail".

To her, when they used to be alone, he used to terrorise her.

Your family will want you to go forward, to a limit.

They want to get you married and control who you marry.

But they don't care what they've done to you.

They just say, "I'm sorry, but you're married to him.

"You have to put up with it."

How can you...?

What can you do?

You can't do anything.

No-one's ever going to understand you.

So you don't have no help from anyone.

Your friends can't help you, and you're just stuck.

Sometimes you just wish you weren't even here.

You just want to be at peace, wherever it is.

You don't want to be here.

The first time when we met, we were in a restaurant.

I met her through a couple of my other friends.

For me, at that time, it was just some other girl.

Gradually, when she opened up, she had a big, big, big laugh,

very loud laugh.

She was really lively, she was really loving.

She had a way with the words,

that she could steal away anybody's heart.

Very clean gesture.

Very naive nature.

Very deep talks.

I think these were the things, you know, which pulled me towards her.

I remember that first time she ever told me about Ali.

I was like, I knew there was some more to this!

I had never seen such a big smile on her face.

She wanted to take me to Piccadilly Circus, and so we took the Tube.

After a while, I was thinking to myself,

"Why not do I see any circus?"

So I asked her, "It says Piccadilly Circus, where is the circus?"

We laughed so hard that we were on the road, you know,

holding our tummies.

With aches in it.

Fun moments.

I think that was the moment, you know,

we knew there was something going on.

It wasn't intentional from both sides,

but things started picking up from there.

Phone calls, then me coming back to London more often,

going to Bradford more often.

She was head-over-heels about him.

She was like, "This is what I want, this is...

"This is what I've prayed for."

Why did she choose Mukhtar?

Because she loved Mukhtar.

She loved the life that Mukhtar offered.

She filled my life with happiness.

Everything was different for me.

Everything started making sense to me.

I was a shy type, she was a shy type.

One fine day, I said, "I think I like you,

"I want to get married to you."

And she was like, "Guess what? I want to marry you too."

I said, "Oh, no, I'm in trouble now."

She was in love, and that's what happens when you're in love.

I think what she tried doing, in terms of being with Mukhtar,

she tried to do it as sensitively as possible.

When did she tell you about her circumstances,

and what did you think?

By the time she told me, we had this connection between us.

We...

We were really close, as friends, and this was, kind of,

a deal between the father and this guy.

He's going to get married to his daughter,

and he's going to come to England for the passport,

and to stay, and blah, blah, blah.

She always considered him as a brother.

How could a father do that to a daughter?

He raised up a child all his life with love, care,

he did so much for his child, and then one fine day,

he just decides that she's no more a daughter, she is a cow,

or a goat, I'm just going to go to the market and sell it.

This is how she got married, and then she was back in England, and...

..things were... Everybody knows how things were.

When she decided she wanted to divorce him,

she said to Shakeel that, "You need to divorce me",

and he was like, "I'm not going to divorce you."

I hadn't seen or heard or spoken to her.

Normally, you know, we'd see each other in town, in Primark.

So I knocked on the door.

She wasn't there.

She must have heard.

She messaged, saying, "My family don't know anything.

"Don't mention anything."

I knew she were hinting at the divorce.

She was saying, you know, she wasn't happy, she was homebound,

she wasn't allowed to go anywhere.

I said to her, you know, you need to leave there.

And she thought, "I do anything yet, I need to divorce him first."

I'd say to her, you don't take life seriously,

and she used to say, "Life's too short.

"It's right, man, it's right, man.

"I'm just going to do it, there's no other choice."

She didn't have a choice.

She longed it out for way too long.

Once she received that divorce paper,

that's when she called Ali over from Dubai, and then that was it.

She wanted her life.

She wanted to be, like, she wanted to be a wife.

She didn't want to just be a normal girl living at home.

She wanted to move away and make a family.

SHE SINGS

GIGGLING

Where's Ali gone?

We got her ready for her wedding day with Ali,

and Samaira did her make-up, and I went with her.

It happened so quick, like,

it was like a secret, we were doing a secret wedding with her.

I was so badly shaking while I was doing her eyes,

and I kept making her cry.

I was like, "Are you really going to leave me?"

And she was like, "Can you stop it?

"You're supposed to be making me be brave and strong."

She made sure it was the best.

It's like she got ready for a grand wedding.

Show me your mehndi, put your arms out. Other way.

INAUDIBLE

LAUGHTER

Oh, it's so much that video.

Her nose, her teeth, her smile, her laugh.

She's so happy.

She looks so alive.

That day was probably the best day. I felt like I was getting married!

That's how good I was feeling.

She said, "Oh, I feel like a princess."

She felt it, she felt it.

Nikah was a very fun day.

I was the chauffeur, I was the groom, I was the photographer.

As soon we stepped out of the Imam's house,

she looked into my eyes and she said, "You know what?"

I said, "What?" "We did it!" So, yeah...

We had tears in our eyes. We were happy and we were crying.

The Imam walked out of the door,

"Guys, relax, I think you're going to be fine."

I was, "Yeah, it's going to be fine."

That was it. They were done.

It was the Nikah, and then it was the English registry,

which, on both occasions, I wasn't able to make it, unfortunately.

Why didn't you go?

I'll be honest, I had other things going on,

and her family used to turn up at my house as it was,

and I felt like I shouldn't get too big for my boots and just,

you know, I'll just take a back seat,

but I'll always be there for her.

I was there throughout the whole... Through the whole journey.

It was nice. You know when you see someone go through a lot,

it's nice to see them be happy because you think, you know what,

they've had their hardship, now it's going to be easy, but...

it didn't get easy for her.

She was basically walking through a snicket with her cousin sister

and some guys attacked her.

And they started hitting her legs with metal poles.

Nobody touched her cousin sister, but she got battered,

so that was personal.

That was a personal attack.

Everybody hides secrets from families and friends,

but he was the biggest secret of her life.

And then, when it came out, it just didn't come out in the right way.

She used to report it to the police, and she used to tell us that.

So we used to get reassured, thinking they'll help her.

She reported everything, everything.

She used to argue with her family and have police on the phone,

and her family didn't know.

She was on top of it. She was very on top of it.

You know, especially when you have a big family,

so you have loads of cousins,

you have loads of uncles and aunties,

and they're all married in the family,

so so-and-so's married to so-and-so's brother,

so-and-so's married to so-and-so's sister, and it's so intense.

I can't think of one person that was by her side.

I knew she had an officer involved.

And I knew she had things going on, but,

I was so caught up in myself and my situation, that I never asked her.

And I just... I feel really selfish.

Towards the end of her living at home, she was really scared, like...

..petrified scared.

She was like a prisoner, really, in her own home.

I thought, you know, maybe they are angry,

maybe they will settle down, but they didn't.

I told Samia, I said, "Listen,

"things are not getting better,

"you come to Dubai and we'll settle it from here."

Behind the scenes, we were planning on getting her ticket, her passport,

getting her mehndi back on cos she's going back to her husband...

And then the next day, she just went.

It was going to happen, there was no other way.

Her family were never going to agree.

It felt right for her.

She thought, "This is what I want."

But, once she did, she was the happiest girl alive.

Wooo!

INAUDIBLE

She loved Dubai from day one.

She explored every corner in Dubai.

She was enjoying herself.

She'd want people to know that she was having fun,

so, yeah, she used to bash Snapchat.

She used to bash Snapchat badly.

Why are we getting free hot chocolate only in Dubai?

She used to drive there as well.

She used to drive her husband's car, and it was on the left-hand side.

She goes, "I've adjusted right well, you know?"

And she was really happy.

But she used to say, "I'm going to give birth to my kids in England",

because she wanted her kids to be British, like their mum.

She was British and proud.

MUSIC: Set Fire to the Rain by Adele

SAMIA SINGS ALONG

# But I set fire to the rain

# Watched it pour as I touched your face... #

Trust me, me and my husband are so eager to become parents.

Allah is testing our patience,

like hell, seriously.

She couldn't wait to have kids.

She was, basically just wanted a family.

She wanted that. In that picture of her and Ali,

she wanted a third person in it, basically.

And if we have a girl, we're going to get her this,

we're going to get her gold,

we're going to get her gold this and gold that.

Things will change so much. Everything will be about the baby.

When me and him start talking about babies, he gets so happy.

He'll be like, "We'll buy this, this and this."

And he's like. "But what are we going to buy for ourselves?"

And I die laughing.

Everything will change once the baby will be born,

when we'll come to know, the moment we'll come to know,

I think everything will change, Inshallah.

She used to say, "Oh, my make-up, I have to put this fixing spray on

"because my make-up melts, but I love it out here."

The thing that was so unfortunate

was that she just couldn't let go of her family.

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.

She wanted to ask for forgiveness from her mum and dad,

and she started to feel bad for what she did.

We still continued talking to the parents, you know, convincing them.

She speaks to the family every day.

She tries to convince the sister, the mother.

She always wanted me to be the father's best friend.

She always used to tell me,

"He's really a nice guy, you'll like him, he'll like you."

As a girl, you think, shit, if I go to do what I want to do,

marry a guy of our own choice, without our mum and dad's blessing,

it's always in our mind, it's always on our conscience.

My mum and dad are not with me, and karma always get you back,

no matter what you do, that's what we believe.

They'll twine it in a way that it's like a hidden curse.

To the father, I literally begged him.

He was, like, saying one thing again and again,

"You leave her, you leave her, you leave her."

I said, "I can't leave her, she's my wife."

She would call, tons and tons of messages,

always messages on WhatsApp, everything.

He wouldn't call back.

The mother would tell, "OK, he's fine, he'll take some time,

"he'll be OK."

The sister would say, "He's really upset with you.

"He doesn't like you any more, he doesn't want to see your face."

Yes, reputation, honour is a big thing.

She used to say it.

Their family respect, that honour matters to them.

No-one's allowed to tarnish that respect that they've got.

People would say, "Look, your daughter's done this,

"your daughter's this".

That's why our parents feel like they're ashamed of what we've done,

so they're carrying on the norms and values,

and they're trying to embed them in so hard,

but they don't understand, we're in the UK, not in Pakistan.

It's the Pakistani culture against us.

I get a call from the cousin, asking about Samia.

And he told me that her aunt,

which was her ex-mother-in-law, she passed away.

She was really in shock.

She really loved her auntie, which she did,

she really loved Shakeel's mum, there's no denying about that.

When Shakeel's mum died, she cried a lot.

She wanted to go to Pakistan after that,

and we had this discussion, why she shouldn't go to Pakistan.

And then, after a few weeks,

she started getting these emotional dialogues from the family.

The father is not well, he's going to pass away any time,

you need to come.

Things might happen to the father.

Then she gets another phone call, you know.

"What if your father dies?"

Blah, blah, blah.

She was...out of control. She just wanted to get to Pakistan,

she wanted to see her father.

I mean, her dad, like he was quite ill for the past few years,

you know, with diabetes.

If anything happened to her dad,

she would never forgive herself for not going.

But she said, there's no reassurance,

so that shows that she feared for her life,

and she couldn't guarantee that she was going to come back.

Samaira Facetimed me, straightaway, she rang me,

she goes, "You won't believe it. Masee's going Pakistan."

I go, "Is she fucking stupid? Does she want to fucking get shot?"

Samaira's like, "I've told her she's going to get shot.

"You're risking everything."

She goes, "She's not having it, she wants to see her dad."

She was packing, and I asked her, "What's happening?"

She was like, "I'm going to Pakistan."

I said, "Where did you buy the ticket from?"

She said, "My sister sent it to me."

I was really upset about it.

I was helpless. What could I have done?

I'm going to face her the rest of my life, knowing that her father

was not well and I stopped her, and something happened to him.

Then I had to let her go.

You know, I stopped my car.

I said, "You still have time, think about it."

She hugs me, and she says,

"Nothing's going to happen to me, I'll be fine."

And that was the last time I've seen her.

Yup.

I really don't know why she went to Pakistan.

It just shocks me. She wasn't a daft girl.

That's the question. Why did she go?

Why did she go? Like, why?

Hi, I got my SIM, I called you. I don't have net.

I'll have net later on, but you can contact me on that number direct.

So, I'm going to leave this place now, head towards my place,

and, so, just ring me.

'Everything will change.'

'Wooo!'

I kept waiting and waiting. She didn't call me back.

I started calling her, texting her, nothing happened.

This was not Samia.

Then I started texting her sister,

and saying, "I'm trying to reach Samia.

"Do you know where she is?"

She kept on reading the texts.

She wouldn't get back to me on that.

10pm, my time, I get a call from her cousin.

He told me that she died of a heart attack.

I thought, "Maybe...

"Maybe this is one of the dirty games they are playing.

"Maybe they took away her passport

"and they don't want her to come back, and they will torture her."

I had a hope that she's still alive, and I might be able to find her.

I just... I was just shocked.

I remember later I fainted, after like an hour, when it sunk in.

I just couldn't grasp the fact that she's dead.

But what really got me was that I was there that time,

I was in Pakistan.

I was in the same clock.

Like, the clock was ticking, at the same time

whilst my mate was getting brutally abused,

I was, God knows, laughing with who, shopping, buying clothes...

Little did I know that a life's been taken.

One of my girls is dying.

Do you know what I mean?

Half of the cousins were saying something,

and half of the cousins were saying something else,

that she's died of a heart attack, or that she fell down the stairs,

she had an asthma attack, she's committed suicide.

And I just thought, "Here we go with all the stories."

Samaira's like, "You need to report it to the police, we need help.

"Pakistan, they've buried her, and no-one will help us."

She was screaming at me on the phone,

"You have to do something there!"

I was like, "I have to do it, I have to do it, I have to do it."

We went to the police station straightaway to report her murder.

I got a text message saying,

"Naz, there's a girl who's been killed in Pakistan,

"she's British, one of your constituents.

"Can you help us, and if you can't, then tell us who can."

And immediately, when I heard the story,

I knew it, I knew she'd been murdered.

There was not a single question in my head

that she had not been murdered.

So what I did, was then I wrote directly

to the Prime Minister of Pakistan.

I took the risk of naming it as an honour killing,

saying it had the hallmarks of an honour killing,

because I was absolutely convinced.

That was when Pakistanis realised,

"Hang on a minute, we need to look into this."

Under light of the available evidence,

the court grants us custody of the accused.

They told us in the investigation how it happened.

Shakeel was hell bent on keeping her in Pakistan,

and breaking off this marriage

with a gentleman who was from outside the family.

Till 20th, they waited.

They went through the personal effects of Samia secretly,

this is what they told us in the investigation.

They were unable to find the passport and the ticket.

When, around noon, she came to that mansion

where her luggage was sitting,

Shakeel went into an argument,

trying to make her stay in Pakistan.

And, when she refused, then he forcefully committed sexual act.

And when he was done with that, she was running down screaming...

That is when Shakeel put the scarf around her neck, and killed her.

REPORTER: Samia was happy in her second marriage.

She conformed to law in Britain, why was she killed in Pakistan?

Was Samia murdered?

I've been talking about family honour for many, many years now.

There's a script we follow as Asian girls, as Pakistani girls.

What you have is, you have young girls who feel that they're

holding their parents' izzat,

and if they step out of line, they will be letting their parents down.

And the pressure of that is absolutely immense.

That because it's so culturally normal,

it doesn't seem like it's been coerced, it's what happens.

In Samia's case, there are classic hallmarks,

classic hallmarks of power, control,

the whole misguided concept of honour,

how it manifests around women,

the control of women.

You know, been there, done it, got the T-shirt.

I know what my community's about, and I know when it's wrong.

And in this case, it was wrong.

I'm not the same person any more.

Even if I smile, even if I laugh,

it's just a fake smile,

it's just a fake laugh.

She completed me, in many ways.

If I say all the ways, it won't be wrong. She did complete me.

You have to have two faces.

One for the world, and one for yourself.

Some people find a balance between the two, and others can't,

and they rebel. And...you just get stuck.

And then you get trapped.

This is what we were always scared of.

This was like the thing that we just knew was going to happen.

That was the sad part, that we knew.

We knew it was going to happen,

but we were oblivious to it at the same time.

To see someone so beautiful in so much pain.

She was dead laying there,

but I could still see pain through her.

It was like I could see "help" written on her forehead,

like "help me, help me".

And you know, she was proud of being British, but it didn't...

She's not got anything for being British.

She's in a better place.

She's definitely in heaven.

Definitely in Jannah.

I just want the truth to come out, and justice to be served.

Let justice... The word "justice" is not good enough

for what I want to happen.

She got murdered.

Everyone should be speaking about the fact that she got murdered.

Honour killing.

It's not a crime what she's done.

It's normal.

It's normal to fall in love.

She told us, she used to say to us, "If anything happens to me...

"you guys are my witnesses.

"I'm telling you lot."

But...

..our words are not good enough, are they?