Uncle was knifed by accident, nephew tells jury

Zaheer Aziz denied he was the attacker in the confrontation and said it was his uncle Mohammed Shabir Choudary who got the knife from the kitchen after a dispute when they had been drinking.

He told Leeds Crown Court Mr Choudary was holding it level with his head and to defend himself he took hold of his uncle's arm with one hand and tried to break his grip on the knife with the other.

"The next thing I remember we were both on the floor, I'm on top of him. He was at the bottom," he said.

He told the court when he got up: "I saw some bleeding, I thought on his shirt." He denied to his counsel Simon Bourne-Arton QC that he had injured his uncle deliberately.

"No, no, no it was an accident but who's going to believe me?" he said.

The jury has heard Aziz was on licence at the time having been released from prison less than a month earlier after serving five- and-a-half years of an eight-year sentence for offences of wounding with intent and drug supplying.

He told the court he did not want to be sent back to prison to complete his sentence so did not stay with his uncle at the flat because he heard a woman's voice over his uncle's care link and assumed help would arrive for him. He also did not realise how badly injured he was.

"It just quickly crossed my mind that the authorities would be here. I didn't want to hang about because of my two-and-half-year licence," he said.

The court has heard the knife wound which entered under the chin penetrated into the chest cavity causing blood loss from which Mr Choudary died.

Aziz, 44, denies murdering Mr Choudary, 52, at his flat in Gill Syke Grove,Thornes, Wakefield, on January 18 this year.

He told the jury he was brought up by his grandparents and Mr Choudary in Pakistan after his own parents divorced.

"He was, God bless his soul, my father, my mother, my life, my world," he said.

He had been treated by him as his own son, and his uncle had visited him while he was in prison and let him stay with him after his release following a period in a probation hostel.

Aziz said his uncle when sober was "a very good man", adding "He would do anything for anybody, he was loving and caring. As well as being a father to me he was my best friend."

But he told the jury when his uncle drank spirits "he was like Jekyll and Hyde, a totally different person, he just turned aggressive, violent".

The trial continues.