Bradford cabbie ‘killed wife’s lover then fled to Pakistan’

A jury was told that Afghan electrician Ahmedin Sayed Khyel, 35, was killed with his friend, labourer Imran Khan, also from Afghanistan, by at least three men at a house in Bradford, West Yorkshire, in May last year.

Prosecutor Tahir Khan QC told Bradford Crown Court that the prime suspect in the murders was taxi driver Muhammed Zubair.

He said Mr Khyel had been having an affair with Zubair’s wife, Kainaat Bibi.

But the court heard that Zubair fled the UK on a flight to Islamabad, Pakistan, and has never been found.

Mr Khan told the jury the prosecution case was that Sabir Hussain, 40 - who went on trial today accused of the murders - was one of the other men involved in the “violent attack with weapons on two defenceless men”.

The prosecutor said: “There can be no doubt that Ahmedin Khyel was murdered because of his affair with this married woman.”

He said: “The two friends were brutally attacked with weapons and killed.

“It’s the prosecution case at least three men were involved in the killings.”

Mr Khan said the two victims were found dead, with head injuries, in a lane near the village of Tong, between Bradford and Leeds.

But he said the killings took place at Zubair’s home at Heath Terrace, Barkerend, Bradford, and Zubair’s van was used to transport the bodies.

Taxi driver Hussain, of Wensleydale Road, Bradford, denies two counts of murder.

He is on trial with Mohammed Iqbal Mazar, 29, of Athol Road, Bradford, who denies one count of perverting the course of justice relating to the removal of blood stains and blood stained furniture.

Mr Khan told the court about Hussain’s account of the attack, which he gave to police, and told the jurors: “You may think he was describing a scene of utter carnage.”

He said Hussain told officers how his friend Zubair attacked the two men with a hammer and, at one point, got the weapon stuck in Imran Khan’s skull.

The prosecutor told the court: “The ferocity of the violence inflicted on the victims was such that the blood stains projected around the wall and on the ceilings of the room.”

Mr Khan said it is the prosecution case that Hussain joined in the attack on the men with a dumbbell bar.

He said the defendant told detectives he only used the bar to push the victims, saying he was only involved in subduing and restraining the men.

Mr Khan told the jury of eight men and four women how the affair between Mr Khyel and Mrs Bibi was an “undisputed fact”.

He said it had gone on for some years despite Mr Khyel living in the East Ham area of London and being married with seven children.

The prosecutor said the two would have sex at Mrs Bibi’s house when her husband and mother were out.

“The two lovers were clearly playing a dangerous game, running a risk their affair would be discovered,” he said.

But, he said, Zubair eventually found the secret mobile phone the pair used to communicate.

Mr Khan said Zubair became extremely angry when he found out about the affair and “expressed a desire to do serious violence” to the man seeing his wife.

He told the jury how Mr Khyel travelled to Bradford on May 10 last year and began hanging around the house in Heath Terrace, where he was spotted by Zubair.

Mr Khan said he must have been “foolhardy in the extreme, if not suicidal” to be around the house when Zubair was there.

He described how Zubair, Hussain and another man were waiting when Mr Khyel and his friend Imran Khan arrived at the house in the evening.

He said Hussain told police the two victims were sitting on a settee when they were attacked by Zubair.

The jury was told how Mrs Bibi, 27, of Heath Terrace, has pleaded guilty to an offence of perverting the course of justice relating to statements she made to police about the whereabouts of her husband, Zubair.

Jurors were also told Zubair’s mother, Arab Sultana, 64, of Heath Terrace, has also pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice in relation to buying her son’s flight to Pakistan.

Both women will be sentenced later, the court heard.