COPENHAGEN, May 15: Nine Pakistanis living in Denmark went on trial on Monday accused of participating in the so-called honour killing of an 18-year-old woman who married without the consent of her parents.

Ghazala Khan was shot dead by her brother with two bullets in the heart in Sept 2005 just outside the train station of Slagelse, west of Copenhagen.

The prosecution has qualified the murder as an ‘honour killing’, the ninth in Denmark in the past decade, but the brother insists it was accidental.

Her husband, whom she had wed secretly, was seriously injured in the attack, thought to have been carried out in the belief that her marriage had tarnished the family’s honour.

Six members of the murdered Ms Khan’s family, including her father and three family friends, were charged with murder and attempted murder.

All the accused pleaded not guilty and the victim’s brother, 29, told the court that it had been an accident and that he had had no intention of killing her.—AFP