Friday, November 25, 2011

The father of a woman gunned down with her businessman husband has been named as the chief suspect in what is thought to have been an honor killing

Glasgow-based Saif Rehman, 31, and Uzma Naurin, 30, from New York, were shot dead on a trip to Pakistan, when their car was ambushed in the north-eastern city of Gujrat. Police in the country say that Naurin’s taxi driver father, 58-year-old Muzaffar Hussain, is being viewed as a chief suspect in the shootings. Hussain, from New Jersey, was in Pakistan at the time of the killing but has now returned to his U.S. home. A group of four gunmen stopped the car carrying Rehman and his wife on November 1, 2011 before killing them. The couple had been about to start a new life together in the United States after their trip to Pakistan for Rehman’s brother’s wedding. They had been married in Manchester, England but another, fuller ceremony involving both sides of the family took place in Glasgow in June 2011. The driver of the car in which Rehman and his wife were travelling was uninjured in the attack and is said to have been an associate of Hussain’s. Named only as ‘Adeel’, he is currently in police custody. The couple were accompanied in the car by Rehman’s sister and her two-year-old daughter, who were also unharmed. Detectives in Pakistan are probing claims that the couple’s marriage had caused upset among some members of Naurin’s family. Police sources in Gujrat said that they had been told she had been married previously to another man in England. A friend of hers in Scotland said that the marriage had been approved by her family – but her first husband, who has not yet been identified, is said to have killed himself. She was later told to marry the dead man’s brother in another arranged match but refused to do so as he was too young. Pakistani police spokesman Nasir Butt said that the deaths were being treated as an honor killing and that Hussain was the chief suspect.

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