Background: Shafilea Ahmed
Ambitious teenager torn between her future and family
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2239254,00.htmlJames Orr and agencies
Friday January 11, 2008
Guardian Unlimited
The teenager Shafilea Ahmed was described as a bright and intelligent young woman who wanted to go to university and become a lawyer.
But the 17-year-old was "torn" between her ambitions, and her family and religion, her inquest at Kendal county hall in Cumbria heard.
The young girl, who received a traditional Pakistani upbringing, confided in her teachers that she feared being forced into an arranged marriage.
She later went missing from her family home in Warrington, Cheshire, in September 2003.
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In February 2004, five months on, her badly decomposed body was found on the banks of the Kent river at Sedgwick, in Cumbria.
Ahmed was most likely strangled or suffocated, according to pathologists. No one has been charged over her death and her parents, Iftikhar and Farzana Ahmed, deny any involvement in her disappearance.
Giving evidence, Ahmed's friends and teachers revealed how the teenager had once arrived at school with a cut lip and bruising on her neck.
She allegedly said one of her parents had held her down while the other one beat her. Her father denied the claim.
Gill Power, Shafilea's form tutor at Great Sankey High School in Warrington, described her as "a really, really lovely girl.
"She was an angel. By Year 11 she was a really bright girl, doing well. Whatever she did she gave 100%." Joanne Code, the school's assistant head teacher, said: "Her aim in life was to become a solicitor and she wanted to go off to study law at university."
Song lyrics written by the teenager were found on the floor of her bedroom after her disappearance. In one song, Happy Families, she referred to a clash of cultures and her family's preoccupation with "honour".
She wrote: "I don't pretend like we're the perfect family no more. Desire to live is burning. My stomach is turning. But all they think about is honour."
In a second song, entitled I Feel Trapped, she wrote: "It was my last year in school, so happy with my friends I got lots to do. But came this day when everything changed, I came home it seemed like a normal day. But sumthing wasn't right. I feel trapped so trapped, I'm trapped."
Kerry Harper, a youth worker at Ahmed's school, met the youngster in January 2003.
She told the inquest how the girl was "genuinely worried" about the prospect of leaving the UK for an arranged marriage and life in Pakistan.
During a family trip to Pakistan that year, Ahmed drank a caustic substance, possibly bleach, and was taken to hospital.
The incident happened after she had been introduced to a possible suitor, the inquest heard. Three months after returning to the UK she vanished.
Referring to arranged marriages, her father told the inquest: "When you look at the children who are born here, whether they want to follow into our footsteps is a different thing.
"That's not something I can decide or someone can decide, that's for them to decide.
"I always ask to my kids, 'Whatever you decide to do with your lives I'm fully behind you'."
Cheshire police arrested Ahmed's parents on December 18 2004 on suspicion of kidnap. They were later released without charge.
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