Shafilea Ahmed's mother caught calling her children 'daughters of pigs' in secret recording

Shafilea Ahmed's mother was overheard calling her children 'daughters of pigs' and threatening to hit them on secret recordings made by the police, a court heard today.

Shafilea Ahmed 

Farzana Ahmed is accused of joining forces with her husband Iftikhar to kill their daughter Shafilea because she was becoming too Westernized.

Mrs Ahmed had since changed her evidence to suggest she had seen her husband beating the teenager before she vanished in 2003 claiming she was too scared to come forward until now.

However it emerged today that Mrs Ahmed was heard 'telling off' her husband in secret recordings made by police when the bugged the family home.

In another extract, Mrs Ahmed was heard shouting at her daughters calling them "daughters of pigs " and threatening to hit them.

She said:"I was just trying to scare them. I did not mean to do what I said."

                                                         ^{Shailea (left) and her parents Farzana and Iftikhar Ahmed}
Mrs Ahmed insisted at the murder trial that she had gone along with her husband's story that Shafilea had run away because she was " scared " of him.
Prosecutor Andrew Edis QC challenged her claim that she had dramatically changed her defence to blame her husband because she had been remanded in custody and was free of his influence.
He said she had been separated from him before after they were first arrested and remanded in separate prisons.
He said:" The truth is that if you had not been involved in the murder yourself, you would surely have told the police your side of it."
She replied:" I am not involved in this.The reason I did not speak out was because I was scared of my husband for the sake of my children and for my family."
"He sat the children down on the evening after she went missing and told them to say that , if anyone asked, Shafilea had gone missing. We were just telling the authorities what he told us to say."
The jury was played six extracts from secret police recordings at the family house in Warrington, Cheshire made after Shafilea went missing in September 2003.
Mrs Ahmed was heard shouting at her husband in discussions about the police investigation.
Mr Edis said:"You don't sound terrified of him. You are telling him off."
She said:"Perhaps I was angry.I was suffering from depression and I was not thinking very clearly."
One extract was of the couple discussing the possibility of their house being bugged by police and Mr Edis said:" You were worried because there was a secret to be kept. You were working together as a team to make sure the cover up was effective."
Mother of five Mrs Ahmed replied:"I had not done anything. I was frightened."
Mr Edis said:"You have stayed with a murderer for nine years. You have operated as a team."
She replied:"I am telling the truth. I have never been part of a team.I have not taken part in anything."
She admitted that the " hundreds of hours " of recordings did not show any signs of violence toward her or any examples of her asking her husband what had become of Shafilea.
She said:"Obviously he did not threaten me 24 hours a day but there were several occasions."
Mr Edis said the taped conversations showed that " you were planning a defence strategy with him because you had done the murder with him."
She replied:"No."
Mr Edis said in a third conversation played to the jury about a trip to Pakistan she was "telling him off."
She said: "That is my normal voice.I was not shouting at my husband.My husband will not allow me to shout at him. In our culture women do not shout at their husbands. It is my normal voice. It is how I speak."
Mr Edis said the extracts showed her speaking " very angrily and very aggressively " to her husband.
He said:"You were in control in the house.You were not just a domestic servant. You could stick up for yourself."
Mrs Ahmed replied:"It is different in your culture. In our culture, it is not acceptable for a woman to go against her husband's wishes."
Mr Edis said to her:" Shafilea had brought shame on your family and if there is one thing you cannot stand, it is shame. It is more important than happiness and even more important than life. That is why you killed her."
Mr Ahmed replied:"No. As I have said before, I did not kill our daughter."
Iftikhar, 52, and Farzana Ahmed ,49,both deny murder.The trial at Chester Crown court continues.