Ten years for Bradford cabbie in double killing - but his accomplice still in Pakistan

A jury found Sabir Hussain, 40, guilty yesterday of the manslaughter of Afghan electrician Ahmedin Sayed Khyel, 35, and his friend, labourer Imran Khan, also from Afghanistan, in Bradford, West Yorkshire, last May.

He was cleared of the men’s murder.

The victims were killed by at least three men, including the ringleader, taxi driver Muhammed Zubair, who fled to Pakistan and has not been captured, Bradford Crown Court heard.

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

Prosecutors told the jury during a three-week-long trial how Hussain was one of the men involved in the “violent attack with weapons on two defenceless men”.

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

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

Hussain, of Wensleydale Road, Bradford, denied two counts of murder.

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

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

“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,” the jury was told.

The prosecution case was that Hussain joined in the attack on the men with a dumbbell bar.

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

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

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

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

The jury heard 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.

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

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

The jury was told that 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.

The two women will be sentenced later.