LONDON, Nov 23: A man was found guilty at a London court on Tuesday of the ‘honour killing’ of a man who had a secret relationship with his sister. Afghan-born Ahmed Bashir, 21, was hacked to death after 20-year-old Nighat Afsar’s family found out about their relationship, which they deemed an insult to their “honour” as Muslims.

Her brother Waseem Afsar and Nisar Khan chased Bashir into a garden and inflicted 40 stab wounds, mainly to the groin, with a scimitar sword and a 25-centimetre knife.

As he tried to intervene, Bashir’s friend Abdul Ebrahimkhail, 24, was also wounded in the July 1996 attack in Hounslow, west London, a suburb with a high South Asian population near the city’s main Heathrow airport.

Waseem Afsar, 32, and Khan, 31, from Slough, west of London, were found guilty of murder and attempted murder and remanded in custody until Friday when they are due to be sentenced to life imprisonment.

Nighat Afsar had been forced to go to Pakistan for an arranged marriage, but she fled and returned to Britain.

Her brother forced her to reveal her relationship with Bashir, pressured her to return to Pakistan and threatened to kill her.

Altman said: “He warned her that he was going to find and kill Mr Bashir and cut his legs off so he could never walk again.”

Three days later, Bashir was attacked. Ebrahimkhail told how Waseem Afsar and Khan chased after Bashir shouting, “Kill him!”

He then saw a man with a machete stabbing down at Bashir. “The other man was sitting on top of him and he kept stabbing him.”

Nighat Afsar has remarried and lives with her husband and children in London.

Around 1.6 million Muslims live in Britain, some 2.7 per cent of the population—AFP