A UK court jailed a Muslim Iranian asylum seeker for life on Thursday on murder charges after he killed his wife by stabbing her 50 times, including for her conversion to Christianity, the court heard.
Having inflicted knife cuts on his estranged wife Avan Najmadiein, 32-year-old mother of four, Dana Abdullah left her to die after discovering that she had refused to back his application to remain in Britain, BBC reported. Authorities stated that Abdullah, aged 35, returned illicitly to the UK after being deported in 2013 for sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl, and he is known to have previously threatened to kill his wife after she was baptised as a Christian, thereby “dishonouring” him.
Dwelling on Abdullah’s previous conviction, Michael Chambers, Stafford Crown Court judge, said, as quoted by Premier:
“It does show that you are not someone of good character and, having been deported for that matter, you chose to come back into this country illegally and have committed this very serious crime”.
Chambers went on to condemn the callous nature of the committed crime:
“This was, on any view, a planned and pre-meditated murder involving a brutal and sustained attack using a knife – knowing full well that it would deprive four children under the age of eight of their mother”, Chambers said.
Along the same lines, Detective Victoria Downing portrayed Abdullah as “an arrogant and controlling man”, asserting that he had committed the crime because he hated his wife’s decision not to throw her weight behind his new asylum application, as well as convert to Christianity.
After stabbing Najmadiein on 1 October, 2018, he tried to set her kitchen on fire in an attempt to get rid of evidence, and then fled, initially to Liverpool, England, and subsequently to Glasgow, Scotland, where he finally turned himself in to police, admitting, though, only to being a “failed asylum seeker” at the time.
Wilson Chowdhry, chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association, told Premier there are crowds of people in the UK who can relate with this story.
Speaking during Premier's News Hour, he said: "We recently wrote a report for the hate crime inquiry on Islamophobia so that we could show the other side of the coin, where much of the persecution of apostates in this country is based on a real hatred for those who quit Islam”. Chowdhry further added that Christian converts need better protection in the country.
