TIMESONLINE: A Muslim teenager who went missing after expressing fears she was being forced by her parents into an arranged marriage was the victim of a “very vile murder", a coroner said today.
Shafilea Ahmed's decomposed body was found by workmen on the banks of the River Kent at Sedgwick, Cumbria, five months after disappearing from her home in Warrington, Cheshire, in September 2003.
Ian Smith, the East and South Cumbria coroner, ruled that the teenager was unlawfully killed. He said he believed the A-level student was murdered, and that the concept of an arranged marriage was "central" to the circumstances leading up to her death.
She was genuinely afraid, rightly or wrongly, that her parents were planning to arrange her marriage, Mr Smith told the inquest at Kendal County Hall at the end of a four-day hearing.
"She was murdered. I’m convinced of that because of the way in which the body was disposed, it had been hidden and she had been taken many miles away from home," he said.
He could not state where she died but he was "very confident" it was not on the river bank. "I do not believe she escaped and ran away. She was taken," he said.
"Shafilea was the victim of a very vile murder. I do not know who did it. There’s no evidence before the court as to who did it.
I sincerely hope in the future inquiries will be carried out by the police and they will one day discover who did it because this young woman has not had justice.
"Her ambition was to live her own life in her own way. To study, to follow a career in the law and to do what she wanted to do.
"These are just basic fundamental rights and they were denied to her." Muslim teenager was victim of ‘vile murder’, coroner says >>> By Lucy Bannerman and agencies
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