England and Wales High Court (Queen's Bench Division) Decisions

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London. WC2A 2LL
		29 September 2005

Introduction

1. On 5 July 2002 at Luton Crown Court, Niaz Ahmed was convicted of the murder of his wife. He had pleaded not guilty. I presided over his trial. Having sentenced him to life imprisonment, I recommended that he should serve at least 12 years in custody before he could be released on licence. The Lord Chief Justice agreed with that recommendation.
2. Schedule 22 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 ("the Act") . came into force on 18 December 2003. By then, the Home Secretary had not notified Mr Ahmed either of the minimum period which he thought Mr Ahmed should serve before his release on licence or that he did not intend that Mr Ahmed should ever be released on licence. Accordingly, the Home Secretary referred Mr Ahmed's case to the High Court under para. 6 of schedule 22 to the Act for the making of an order under sections 269(2) or 269(4) of the Act - in effect, an order that Mr Ahmed should never be released on licence, or an order that his release on licence can be considered by 'the Parole Board after he has served a specified time in custody ("the minimum term"). Section 270(1) of the Act requires me to give the reasons for such order as I make in ordinary language.

The facts

3. I take the facts of the case from my report to the Home Secretary. Mr Ahmed was 40 years old at the time of the murder. He came to the UK from Pakistan when he was 6. The deceased, Imtiaz Ahmed, was his second wife. His previous marriage had ended in divorce. He and Imtiaz had been married for about 15 years at the time of her death. They had four children. They lived in Luton. Mr Ahmed worked as a driving instructor using his own car.
4. In recent years, their marriage had been stormy. Imtiaz suspected Mr Ahmed of having an affair with her 19 year old niece who lived with them. Mr Ahmed denied having an affair with her, but the arguments which he and Imtiaz had over her suspicions continued. Mr Ahmed admitted that their arguments became physical: they would hit and push each other, and things would get thrown as well. Indeed, on one occasion Mr Ahmed slashed the settees in the house.
5. Mr Ahmed claimed that knives played a part in their arguments. The first occasion on which he had used one was by flashing it in front of Imtiaz to make her stop arguing. He found that the stratagem worked. They would kiss and make up. He claims that he had subsequently used this ploy on a number of occasions, including the night on which his wife had died.
6. In June 2001, Mr Ahmed began an affair with a local Asian girl. In August, Imtiaz discovered that Mr Ahmed was having an affair, but not with whom. She took an overdose of painkillers, and was admitted to hospital for 2 days. In October, Imtiaz discovered who Mr Ahmed was having the affair with, and in an argument on the following day she was injured in the head. Mr Ahmed claimed that it was an accident; and although Mr Ahmed was arrested, Imtiaz declined to proceed with her complaint. On an occasion in December, the police were called to the house following the report of an incident there (not one connected with any alleged violence by Mr Ahmed on Imtiaz), and as the police were leaving, Imtiaz told them that she was sure that Mr Ahmed would hurt her one day, and that she just wanted the police to remember that she had told them that. The prosecution relied on this evidence as an indication of the extent to which Imtiaz feared for her safety when she quarrelled with Mr Ahmed.
7. In January 2002, Mr Ahmed's car was written off in an accident. Mr Ahmed needed to buy a replacement car to carryon working. He was an undischarged bankrupt and unable to get credit. Accordingly, Imtiaz applied in her name for a loan. On 5 February, the loan was agreed, and she signed the relevant documents on 7 February. She died in the early hours of the following morning.
8. The events leading up to her death were these. Imtiaz had been led to believe that Mr Ahmed's affair had finished a few months earlier. In fact, it had not. On 7 February, Imtiaz discovered from the itemised bill of Mr Ahmed's mobile 'phone that he was still seeing his girlfriend. Mr Ahmed and Imtiaz argued about that, and in a conversation which he was to have on the 'phone with his girlfriend later that night immediately after his wife had been stabbed, Mr Ahmed indicated that his wife was no longer going ahead with the application for the loan. Their argument started again later that night. In the course of that argument, they found themselves in the back room. Mr Ahmed's evidence was that he went into the kitchen to get a knife as he had done in the past. He was not intending to use it. He was simply intending to intimidate her to stop her arguing with him. The big knife which he had previously used for this purpose was not in the block, so he grabbed two knives, holding them both in his right hand. He returned to the back room, and swung both knives towards Imtiaz, but just as he did so, she inexplicably stumbled forward. Both of the knives penetrated her, one of them piercing her heart, and se died shortly afterwards.
9. By its verdict, the jury must be taken to have rejected Mr Ahmed's account, and to have accepted the prosecution's case, which was that Mr Ahmed was a man with a temper who was capable of violence, who had fallen out of love with his wife and who could not give up his girlfriend, who became extremely angry when his wife told him that she would be withdrawing her application for a loan, and who finally snapped and deliberately stabbed his wife. The prosecution had argued that Mr Ahmed's evidence about the role which knives had played in their arguments in the past was untrue, and that Mr Ahmed had made it up to explain his use of the knives on the night in question. The prosecution had also argued that Mr Ahmed's evidence of having two knives in the one hand had been untrue, and that he had made that up to explain how two stab wounds could have been caused by one movement. The jury must be taken to have accepted those arguments. The likeliest scenario is that Mr Ahmed stabbed Imtiaz once with the smaller of the two knives, that it had hit her breastbone, and that Mr Ahmed had then picked up the larger knife and had stabbed Imtiaz with it, causing the fatal injury.

The appropriate minimum term

10. The minimum term which Mr Ahmed should serve must reflect the seriousness of his offence. That involves choosing the appropriate starting point, and then taking into account any aggravating or mitigating factors to the extent that they were not allowed for in the choice of the appropriate starting point.
11. Under the current law, the choice of the appropriate starting point is limited to a whole life order, 30 years or 15 years. All murders involve the tragic loss of life, but the murder of Imtiaz Ahmed did not come within any of the examples given in schedule 21 to the Act of cases for which either a whole life order or a starting point of 30 years is appropriate. The appropriate starting point for the minimum term in Mr Ahmed's case is therefore 15 years.
12. The history of domestic violence which culminated in Mr Ahmed's attack on his wife was an aggravating feature. Mr Ahmed claims that she gave as good as she got. But his three previous convictions for assault occasioning actual bodily harm show that he had a violent streak in his character. As it was, there was the time when Imtiaz reported his violence on her to the police, and there was also the occasion when she made the chilling prophecy that Mr Ahmed would hurt her one day. And Mr Ahmed's total lack of contrition during the trial does not help his cause. He claims that he now deeply regrets that his actions led to the death of his wife. But he came across as an arrogant and assertive man who was profoundly unselfconscious of his own shortcomings.
13. On the other hand, there were two features which significantly mitigated his crime. First, as I told his counsel at the time, I do not think that Mr Ahmed intended to kill his wife. He merely intended to cause her really serious bodily injury. Secondly, although Mr Ahmed went into the kitchen to get the knives with which he was to kill her - and to that extent the killing was not completely spontaneous - his killing of his wife was not planned. It was an almost spontaneous reaction to a build-up of events, including pressure being put on him by his girlfriend to decide where their relationship was going, anger on the part of his wife because he had continued to deceive her, and worry that he would not be able to obtain a replacement car to carry on working if his wife withdrew the application for the loan. These factors are sufficiently weighty to justify a significant reduction in the appropriate starting point. In my view, the minimum term should be set at 12 years.
14. The minimum term which I must set may not be any longer than the minimum term which would have been set by the Home Secretary under the practice which the Home Secretary would have followed at the time. Recommendations by the trial judge and the Lord Chief Justice were then based on the guidance given by the then Lord Chief Justice, Lord Bingham, in a letter he sent to judges on 10 February 1997. Lord Bingham said that his practice was to take 14 years as the period actually to be served for the unexceptional murder. One of the situations in which he contemplated reducing the term was where the killing was a spontaneous act - for example, a sudden response to family pressure or to prolonged or eventually unsupportable stress. But as his successor, Lord Woolf, said in Sullivan [2004] EWHC Crim 1762, the Home Secretary fixed the minimum term in accordance with the recommendation of the trial judge and the Lord Chief Justice "in the great majority of cases". There is nothing in this case which suggests that this would have been one of those exceptional cases in which the Home Secretary would have differed from the view expressed by me and Lord Woolf. I conclude, therefore, that the minimum term which would have been set by the Home Secretary under the practice which he would have followed at the time would not have been less than 12 years.
15. Finally, from the minimum term of 12 years which Mr Ahmed must serve, there must be deducted the time which he spent on remand in custody prior to sentence. That period was four months and 23 days.

Conclusion

16. I therefore order that the early release provisions in sections 28(5)-(8) of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 apply to Mr Ahmed as soon as he has served 11 years 7 months and 8 days of his sentence. That is the minimum term which I set for his case. For the avoidance of doubt, he will not be eligible to be considered for his release on licence by the Parole Board until 12 February 2014, which is 12 years after the date on which he was first remanded in custody.