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Murder Point of Contact Season 1 Episode 3
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#Murder
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FunTranscript
00:00This was a cold and calculated murder.
00:16There's always a breaking point in an investigation.
00:24The timeline of events didn't add up.
00:30It was crucial we supported our family contact.
00:35The house was like an inferno.
00:53The flames were going through the roof.
00:57It was completely engulfed.
01:01If I'm being honest, we probably weren't prepared
01:03for the enormity of what we had to deal with.
01:09Five sisters perished in the fire.
01:14The saddest thing is when me and Christine
01:17went to address the coffins on behalf of the family.
01:19I'll never forget that.
01:29I first met the Chistie family when three generations of their family
01:34had been murdered in their own home.
01:37From that moment on, I became their point of contact
01:40in a murder investigation.
01:43My name is Christine Freeman.
01:45I'm a former detective constable with West Yorkshire Police.
01:49I was assigned as a family liaison officer, which is also known as a flow,
01:52on what became known as the Birkby Fire Investigation.
01:58In a murder investigation, the rule of flow is absolutely vital.
02:04It's about liaising between the victims, families and the inquiry team
02:10and making sure that the victim and the family are kept up to date
02:14on the latest developments or any evidence that we've come across.
02:21Doing a death warning is the hardest thing ever.
02:24You're dealing with people at the worst possible time of their lives.
02:28They're traumatised.
02:40Shortly after two o'clock, I get a call from force control.
02:44There's a serious house fire.
02:46It doesn't look as though it's accidental.
02:48And we've got people dead.
02:51I'm Bob Bridstock.
02:52I was a senior investigating officer at West Yorkshire Police
02:55who took charge of the murder investigation into the Chistie family.
02:59I've called Christine.
03:01PHONE RINGS
03:03Hello? Christine Freeman?
03:06Yeah, OK.
03:08House fire? Crikey.
03:10I'll get to the station as soon as I can.
03:13I was in bed and received a phone call from the deputy SI
03:19saying that, you know, a fatal fire had occurred
03:23in the Birdby area of Huddersfield.
03:25The role of a flow is extremely important.
03:29It's the first point of contact.
03:30This is the people that are going to be with the family,
03:33supporting the family in every which way, right through,
03:36hopefully, to the end trial to a person's convicted.
03:40I went into the CID office and I attended a briefing.
03:45We were told that the fire was really fierce.
03:47There were several children that had not escaped the fire.
03:52We don't know who's critically injured
03:55or who's actually passed away at this moment in time.
03:59I live probably 15, 20 minutes away from Osborne Road
04:09at Birkby at Huddersfield, so I know the area well.
04:13I get to a place called Fixby, and Fixby round about,
04:15you're on top of the hill and you're dropping down into Birkby.
04:18I see a glow in the sky.
04:20This is like a beacon.
04:22You know, like you see on a bonfire night,
04:24where the flames are licking up into the skies
04:27and it's a massive fire.
04:29And I'm thinking to myself, my God, this is bad.
04:32This is really bad.
04:35By the time I arrive at 40 Osborne Road,
04:39I see fire officers sat on a garden wall, absolutely shattered.
04:45The fire is extinguished and there's water everywhere.
04:48It's going to flush away a lot of evidence.
04:50Fire officers are in tears, they are exhausted.
04:55Neighbours that have been evacuated are saying,
04:57God, this went off, we thought it was a bomb blast.
05:02The whole street was in uproar.
05:04Witnesses are telling me we had a glass break, we had screaming.
05:08We saw faces at the window and they vanished.
05:12Horrific, absolutely horrific, devastating.
05:17Amazingly, people had escaped.
05:19There were one male, had jumped from an upstairs window,
05:22which I later found out was Shafiq.
05:26I remember Shafiq with the smoke-blackened face,
05:30he's in a lot of pain, he's sort of semi-conscious,
05:35he's talking, he doesn't know what's happened, why it's happened.
05:38And my main concern is, let's get you treated,
05:41let's get you off to hospital.
05:43And his mum had come out of the bedroom window
05:47but had landed on her head, so she was seriously injured.
05:51Priority is preservation of life and look after the injured.
05:55There was a young woman had woken before the fire hit the staircase
06:01and she managed to get downstairs and lead her dad out of the back door.
06:06She could hear the children screaming from the bedroom upstairs.
06:13My actions were to go to the hospital to speak to the daughter,
06:18who we now know is Sadiqa, who had come down the staircase.
06:22She was extremely shocked.
06:25Shafiq was in and out of consciousness
06:29and I don't think he really took on board who I was.
06:36After seeing Shafiq, I went back to the office
06:39to report back to the SIO, Mr Bridgestock, in charge of the investigation.
06:45I was asked who I'd like to help me as a second family liaison officer
06:53to work on the investigation with me.
06:55I asked for John Lee to assist.
06:59I've only finished my family liaison course the Friday night
07:03before the Sunday morning that I met up with Christine
07:06to become part of the investigation.
07:08I am John Lee, a former detective from West Yorkshire Police
07:14and I was the family liaison officer of the Burby House fire.
07:17John and Christine are available.
07:20That's great news for me.
07:21Let's have them there.
07:22Let's get them with the Chisty family.
07:25I can breathe a sigh of relief and I know I can trust their experience
07:30and they can look after that side of the investigation.
07:32The family lived at number 40.
07:38The main man was Abdulaziz Chisty.
07:41He was their granddad.
07:43And he lived at that address with his wife and his children.
07:47And visiting them at that time was his daughter and their grandchildren.
07:53They were all in the house at the time of the attack.
07:55I tell them, just wrap your arms around these people.
07:58They need support and they're going to need that support,
08:01especially when we're going to have to break the news of who's died in this fire.
08:10It was the last day of football season
08:14and there were extended highlights on telly.
08:16And my brother, Atik, he was there in my bedroom till quite late.
08:24My name is Mohammed Shafiq and I'm a victim
08:28and one of the surviving members of the Chisty family from the Berkeley house fire.
08:34My sister and nieces, they used to wake till late and spend time as much as they could
08:41because they didn't have long to go before they went back to Pakistan.
08:47We went to sleep around half 12, one o'clock.
08:50My mom, she was sleeping in the same bedroom as myself.
08:56She heard some noises and that was from the breaking of the glass.
09:01And there was smoke in the bedroom.
09:06I could see some flames from the floorboards.
09:08As I opened the bedroom door, there were flames outside.
09:15So we ran towards the bedroom window, opened the window.
09:22I jumped from the window.
09:24My mom, she was in her 50s and had severe back problems.
09:31She couldn't jump properly.
09:32She fell on some concrete slabs and had brain hemorrhage from the fall.
09:40The house was like an inferno.
09:43The flames were going through the roof.
09:46It was completely engulfed.
09:50My younger brother, he was trying to break the glass of his bedroom.
09:55We saw him falling from the window to the floor.
10:03My sister and nieces, they were in the bedroom behind.
10:08And we don't know what happened in that room.
10:13We were helpless.
10:14We couldn't do anything.
10:17I was in excruciating pain.
10:19And it was, I was in my nightclothes in the west.
10:26And my arms were bare and some of my skin from my arm and my hand came off.
10:38And there was a breeze blowing.
10:40And it was making my pain so, so bad that I was struggling to stand.
10:49My name is Craig Briggs.
10:57I was officer in the case on the murder of eight members of the Chisti family.
11:03I was tasked with conducting an interview with Abdul Majid, one of the sons of the family.
11:09My other younger brother, Abdul Majid, and on that night, he was in the other house that we had across the road.
11:24And he was woken up by shattering of the front room window.
11:28He was an eyewitness to tragic unfolding events.
11:34He could hear the screaming from, from where he was.
11:38And when he got outside the house, he was just broken.
11:40And then we took him back to the other home, but he was looked after.
11:46And family liaison officers looked after his welfare as well.
11:50When Majid replayed the incident, he said that he saw three, possibly four,
11:58Asian males in the front garden, and they were putting petrol bombs through the front window.
12:05These perpetrators, they, they had set the house on fire and they were running down the road
12:14as he was running across the road from the other house.
12:20As the morning waves on, we find out that the downstairs lounge windows have actually been broken.
12:28Within the debris, we can see glass. We also see metal nuts.
12:33And we're thinking, somebody's done a lot of planning here.
12:36The doors also have petrol poured through it.
12:40That has perished. So there's a vast amount of fuel being used.
12:44I've dealt with fires before. What do I say? We see when you've seen a gas explosion.
12:49I've never seen such devastation.
12:52It was a difficult task for the crime scene management.
12:59The next phase is going to be trying to remove the bodies from the house.
13:03We're satisfied that those inside would not survive.
13:07They've got a shell of the house. You can still smell petrol in the air.
13:12The actual process of recovering the, the deceased from the property was going to take some time.
13:18Because it had to be done under sort of scientific circumstances to try and preserve evidence.
13:27Inside the house, as it starts to cool down, there is no staircase.
13:32We're not going to go walking across the floor because structurally, is it safe?
13:37As the hours progress and daylight comes, we can get up the stairs to the ladder with our coverall suits on and be told where the bodies are.
13:46It's about removing those bodies carefully, with dignity, we'll have a tent outside and bodies will be brought out independently into the tent first before they are taken away by ambulance to the safety of the mortuary.
14:01In my opinion, there was no way that we could subject the survivors to the ordeal of identifying the deceased.
14:17They were so badly burnt.
14:19The autopsies give you the severity of the deaths, the reason for the death, what caused the death.
14:28You have to have a cause of death for the court. How did these people die? And they were either burnt or asphyxiated.
14:33And on this circumstance, they also used the dental records from comparing them to 100% to clarify their identification of the victims.
14:44People that died in the house, unfortunately, was his daughter, his son, and five grandchildren.
14:52This is just his wife who jumped out the window and unfortunately died later in the hospital.
14:55The victims were Zaid Anissa, who was 54, and Atik Rahman, who was 18 years old, Nafisa Aziz, who was 35,
15:06Tayaba Batool was 13 years old, Rabiba Batool was 10 years old, Atika Nawaz was 5 years old,
15:16Anissa Nawaz was 2 years old, and Najiba Nawaz was only 2 months old.
15:22Shafiq, who jumped out the window and was burnt, and Mr Shisti and Sadiqa, who left the house out the back,
15:29they were mentally scarred for the rest of their life.
15:34I was tasked to inform them that eight members of the family had been killed in a fatal house fire.
15:42Doing a death warning is the hardest thing ever.
15:45I tried to think how I would like to be given such terrible, sad news.
15:52It's a case of taking your time and preparing them for it, saying, you know, the news is not good.
16:00I was still in a denial, but John and Christine, they told us in a very sensitive way.
16:11It's probably one of the hardest things I've done in 30 years police work.
16:16Telling people that members of the family have been killed, there's no training, no way of doing that at all.
16:26You've just got to be open and honest and give them the facts, you don't hold anything back,
16:31but try to present it in the best way you can possible.
16:33There was a lot of investigation work still being conducted at the scene, searches being conducted,
16:45forensic samples being obtained, glass milk bottles were used, filled with fuel,
16:52and then nuts and bolts put in. There's a couple of reasons for the nuts and bolts. The first is
16:58kinetic energy. When it goes through a double glazed window, it will smash the window.
17:04But also the fuel will sit around the rim inside the nut and it will spread the fire.
17:12So when they were thrown through, the fire sort of spread through that living room.
17:17They just put the nuts in and then filled them with fuel and then they had a rag at the top,
17:22basically homemade Molotov cocktails that they threw through the bare window of the house.
17:28A petrol canister was located probably about, I'd say about 200 metres from the address,
17:36down an alleyway. And I'm thinking to myself, thank you God, let this be, you know, is it connected?
17:43Is it going to help me? We wanted to identify the fuel in the petrol canister to see if we could
17:49identify it as the same from the address that had been attacked. Having worked with Accelerance
17:57over a number of years, certain petrol companies and retailers put additives into fuel and the
18:05number of additives or the different types of additives can give what in essence is almost like
18:11a fingerprinting fuel. We were able to say that additives have been put into the fuel at the scene
18:18and the similar additives are in the petrol canister. Though there was a lot of work to do in order to
18:26establish that, that's basically how we were able to say that that fuel had a link with the scene.
18:33There was a lot of work in relation to motor vehicles and obtaining petrol samples from petrol stations
18:41around sort of the Birkby area, who were trying to secure where the fuel was, had been obtained.
18:47My childhood wasn't spent in Huddersfield, it was in Pakistan. I came here at the age of 16 and after
19:04that I've spent all my life in Huddersfield. We lived in an area where there were other families from
19:12Pakistan and we got on well with each other as well as our English neighbors. The house where we lived
19:20was a standard three bedroom terrace house where my family, my mom, dad and three of my other siblings,
19:30we lived in that house. My mother, she mainly stayed in the house and looked after us. She did all the
19:38house things. She was a very good cook and not many people make Indian tea that my mother did and I miss, I miss that.
19:53My brother, he enjoyed life and he was a big fan of Manchester United. He regularly played football
20:01with his friends. They were good friends and he spent a lot of time with them. My older sister,
20:07Nafisa, she was very caring. When we came in this country, my sister, she was already married and
20:14had children. She couldn't come. She stayed in Pakistan with her children and her husband and
20:22she missed us very much. She came to visit us. She had five daughters and they were all lovely.
20:31I was very close to all of them.
20:32The sad thing is, I think Nafisa and the five children, days later, were due to return to Pakistan.
20:40They'd stayed longer. So Mr. Chisty could spend time with his granddaughters.
20:46The Chisty family were law-abiding, good people who took the religion seriously, who
20:55wanted to help the community in whatever way they could. It made it harder to do the investigation
21:01because why would somebody want to hurt such lovely people. You're probably always looking for a motive,
21:09always looking for a reason why something's happened. The more work that we did, we identified where that
21:14link probably was.
21:22That morning, I make an appeal at the bottom of the street. I'm appealing for witnesses, evidence,
21:27for them to come forward. Anybody with any information to come forward. And what we do know
21:33from enquiries, from witnesses, there was a car prior to this, in the early hours, driving up and down
21:39Osborne Road. They were wrecking the place, waiting until people went to bed, waiting until the lights went out.
21:46So they knew the house was occupied. We're getting to find out this is a really planned evil attack
21:53on the Chisty family. The investigation process continued at all times whilst we were family
22:00as an officer. We were getting as much information as we could from the family. Shafiq told us about
22:07a young man had visited the house, wanted to speak to a teak and failed threats were made.
22:14He looked angry. He used the words, you don't know what kind of people we are threatening. I called
22:28a teak downstairs. I said, someone is here asking for you. Do you know this person? And a teak,
22:35he said, no, I don't know anything about that.
22:38The fact that the young man was driving a black BMW, which was left-hand drive,
22:45certainly helped in his identification. The person who visited the Chisty family home
22:52was a young man called Shaheed Mohammed. I'd had dealings with Shaheed Mohammed previously.
22:59You could tell he thought a lot of himself.
23:01So we're making headways into this investigation because these people need catching and quickly.
23:12I get two sets of fingerprints on that petrol can. One is a light called Nasir Hussain
23:18and the other is Shaquille Shahzad, both mid-20s. And we get information about a pair of surgical
23:25gloves that have been dumped about a mile from the scene. And on the gloves,
23:30Nasir is saying, fingerprints are on those. We had CCTV from McDonald's.
23:37The next day, we know that they went there and they were talking about what they'd done.
23:42But the investigation team in that early stage identified offenders.
23:47We start doing raids on houses. And certain people were arrested.
23:51The main suspects in this were Shaheed Mohammed, Shaheed Iqbal, Shaquille Shahzad,
23:58and Nasir Hussain. So we've got 36 hours with the people we've got in custody.
24:03Between the 35th and the 36th hour, we can go to Magistrates Court
24:10and apply for a third, up to a third of 72 hours. We're not releasing these. We know they're involved.
24:18Eight people have been murdered and we get in a silence. From those arrested,
24:23it's no reply. You know, they don't want to know.
24:27I was involved in interviews and involved in the interview with Shaheed Mohammed. Shaheed Mohammed's
24:35demeanour, calm and arrogant. He made no comment to all the questions in the interviews.
24:43And as a result of this occasion, they didn't meet the threshold for a charge.
24:48One is granted bail. Shaheed Mohammed. Sadly, about an hour later, we are urging to connect him to the
24:57crimes. We were starting to look at the petrol evidence from his home address. We recovered some
25:06footwear that smelled strongly of accelerants. And it matches petrol at the scene. Shaheed Mohammed
25:15couldn't be found, couldn't be located. Inquiries were conducted throughout the UK. And the belief
25:22was that he'd got a flight out of the country. He's on the run. And he's gone.
25:31The funeral was held on the 6th of July, 2002, at Huddersfield Town Football Stadium.
25:38There was a crowd of thousands. There was an awful lot of police officers attended, fire brigade,
25:48who had all been all badly affected by this tragedy.
25:53This was a crime against the community.
25:55By the time it came to organising the funeral, the family were still emotionally affected,
26:02traumatised. Trying to think straight when you're under such great trauma is difficult.
26:09John and I took it upon ourselves to try and help with the organisation of the funeral.
26:15From where the family live, you can see Huddersfield Town Football Ground. And at that time, I had big
26:20contacts with the football grounders. One of my boys played football there. I contacted Huddersfield
26:25Town and asked them if it would be possible that we could hold a service for the family at the
26:31football ground. And that would give us the opportunity for many people to attend. They were
26:36fantastic and agreed to the whole process. The co-op funeral care were absolutely amazing. They provided
26:43eight separate hearses with a funeral director assigned to each body. There was eight coffins from little
26:51babies all the way up to adults. Me and my colleague Christine had to go on behalf of the family to the
27:01funeral home and leave flowers and notes and pillows for each member of the family that had died. Me and
27:08Christine held our brave faces while we were doing it. And then at the end of that we went and then sat
27:14back in the CID car and me and Christine both burst into tears. And talk things through because
27:22we were support for each other and I think that it's vitally important that you're working in pairs so
27:32that you've got that support. It was a good feeling that people cared
27:38about what happened and they were there for us.
27:49I'm looking for why has this house been targeted. Shafiq's younger brother Ati Raymond is 18.
27:57He goes to the same college as a lad called Saud who was going out with a girl called Shaheeda.
28:04There was no real link between the Chisti family and the attackers. But what there was Atiq was friends
28:13with a young man called Saud Pervais. Saud was going out with Shaheed Mohammed's sister.
28:20Shaheed Mohammed's family didn't approve of it because they were young. I think she was 17 at the time
28:33and he was 18. They wanted her to have more education too early for her to be in a relationship and to get
28:45married. Also they were different cast. Possibly that was another factor.
28:53Saud and Shaheeda going back to October 2001 had fled up to Newcastle. Her brother didn't like this so
29:03him and his friends Shaheed Mohammed, Shaheed Iqbal, his gang if you like if you want to call them that
29:09go up to Newcastle drag them back. And when I say drag them back they kidnap him. Saud gets a beating.
29:17He gets pistol whipped. He gets threatened with death. And they warn him stay away from my sister.
29:23In December the couple have fled again up there and it happens again. Newcastle police are looking at
29:32this team for kidnapping assault. Atik knows about this. Newcastle police look to Atik because he knows
29:41about it and want him to be a witness. Atik does not want to be involved in any way shape or form.
29:49Shaheed Iqbal and Shaheed Mohammed had already assaulted Atik. We're finding out that Atik was the target.
29:56He didn't want to be involved. They warned her that they would kill him. And of course a few days later they do.
30:07Through the Newcastle inquiry, through the people that were now talking, through the family,
30:12we got to know all the mobile phone numbers and the gang. Through cell site analysis we do some
30:19tremendous work and it shows us all the phones, all those involved on the night and then into the early
30:29hours parking up on St John's Road. This gives the intelligence we need. We know who's done it. We
30:37know where they were. We know what they said afterwards. We know where they've text. After they've
30:42petrol bombed the house and poured fuel through the letterbox, three cars have gone off in different
30:47directions. Through the intelligence work we are able to show where the three cars went,
30:54what routes they took and then they all meet up in a place in Bradford, what was it like a security
31:00office works. We searched that area and we recovered burnt clothing. They've been advised,
31:08get rid of all your clothing, get rid of your phones, you don't want any connection to this.
31:12So everything's come together. We get sufficient evidence to go to the Crown Prosecution Service.
31:20We charge Shaheed Iqbal with eight counts of murder. We charge him with conspiracy to commit damage or
31:27endanger life or arson. And Naseem Hussain and Shaheed Shaqeel Shahzad, we charge with manslaughter and relevant
31:36offences again. The conspiracy to commit arson and cause damage. I remember Shaheed Mohammed had skipped
31:43bail, leaving other people to to get convicted for offences that he was involved in.
31:57The trial started on in July 2003. At home after the incident and also when the trial happened,
32:10John and Christine, they were great help. The trial is one of the most traumatic parts for the
32:17the victim's family, especially in this case because every member of the family were witnesses.
32:25What that means is that none of them can go sit in court until they've given their evidence.
32:31In order to prepare the family for trial, we took them on a pre-court visit so they could look at the
32:37courtroom, have it explained to them where they would be given evidence so that they weren't going into
32:43the unknown. And explain the whole procedure to them. And that makes it feel a little bit easier when
32:49you get there. I told them that the defence might ask a question you're not happy with but just stick
32:55to your honest story at all times. But also we prepared them in other ways in that you don't always
33:02get a guilty verdict to talk them through how we would deal with that.
33:12And I was with them every bit of the day. During the trial, I remember me and Christine picking them up
33:18in a big transit van and transporting them to court every day. They're actually brilliant.
33:24Between myself and John, one of us would always be with both parts of the family, the one that had given
33:29their evidence and the one that were waiting to give their evidence.
33:35As far as the family as a rule goes, you're not just dipping in and out, you're there at all times.
33:40It's never easy for witnesses and family of the deceased to sit, give evidence and look at the suspects.
33:51They stuck to the facts and they were able to stand up there and face the people that had done these
33:56awful things to them. When the jury went out to deliberate, we all went bound to the family room.
34:03It's such a nail-biting situation when you're waiting for the jury to come back.
34:08That was one of the worst times ever, waiting for the jury to come back with a verdict.
34:14Feeling nervous, wondering what's taking so long.
34:17The suspects were all found guilty of various charges.
34:24On the 30th of July 2003, Shaquille Shahzad and Nazar Hussain were convicted of manslaughter
34:37of the eight members of the Chishti family and they were sentenced to 18 years in prison.
34:41The third offender got conviction for murder for 23 years.
34:55These individuals, most of the offenders, they are behind bars. However, it wouldn't bring our
35:02family members back. The initial trial was concluded and everybody was sent to prison,
35:11but it wasn't over for the family. The investigation was trying to trace Shaid Muhammad. This took a long,
35:19long time. In 2011, I actually retired as a police officer.
35:28I had retired in 2013, but we kept in touch. The search for Shaid Muhammad was still ongoing,
35:36and I was still in contact with the family. We kept, kept contact at all time.
35:42Shaid Muhammad was still outstanding. There was anecdotal intelligence as to where he could be,
35:47but the process of trying to identify where he was, was proving very difficult.
35:58I'm Lisa Griffin, and I was the detective superintendent SIO leading the next Chishti family murder investigation.
36:10And I joined the homicide and major inquiry team in 2010. That was my first encounter with the investigation.
36:19My investigation team included a number of officers who had worked on the
36:23Birkby House fire from the initial stages. The conclusive evidence that Shaid Muhammad,
36:30who was involved in the fire, came with the forensic examination. Accelerants were found on his footwear,
36:37but that information was not available to the investigating team while he was in police custody.
36:43Those results came back later after he'd been released on police bail.
36:47It was 2013, and we were going to approach the 10th anniversary, and it seemed an appropriate time
37:02to do an appeal to the public. I held a press conference with the family. I invited in the media,
37:10and we covered it as widely as we possibly could to make an appeal to the public. We did get several
37:16calls from the public, but informed that he had fled the country and that he was in Pakistan.
37:22We established that he was in Jellum City.
37:29We wanted him to be extradited to the UK so that he would face trial in a British court of law
37:35and be sentenced in accordance with UK law. We worked closely with my counterpart, an SIO within
37:42Pakistan. Only a limited number of my investigation team were aware that we were deploying to Pakistan.
37:50We didn't want any risk of the offender being alerted to our presence within Pakistan
37:55and of the arrest inquiries being undertaken.
38:00We had to be really careful as well, making contact with the Chisti family, because we were
38:07conscious that the Muslim community is a really tight community. They go to mosque and, you know,
38:13and they discuss things. They were sworn to secrecy. It was very important that they kept things tight
38:20within the family.
38:26The team I sent to Pakistan were the core elements of my investigation team, and they were trustworthy and
38:33reliable. We're clear in our objective that we need to secure evidence to support the arrest of Shaheen Mahmood.
38:43In October 2015, my colleague identified a property in Jellum City. He sent that back to me. I looked at a
38:52photograph of a number of males on a balcony and identified one of those individuals as Shaheen Mahmood.
39:01Once the sighting was confirmed, we wanted to effect the arrest without any delay. This was quite a time
39:08of worry and concern because it was probably going to be the only opportunity we had.
39:19The arrest was rapid. The officers were able to gain entry to the premise and Shaheen Mahmood was
39:26caught very much off guard and very much surprised by their presence. It was a moment of sheer joy
39:33and relief because we'd worked hard for that. I'd often thought about how I would react at that moment
39:42and the reality was, it sounds a bit dramatic, but I just went and sat alone because I knew I
39:50would have to break the news to Shafiq and his family that we'd finally secured the arrest of Shaheen Mahmood.
39:56After 13 years of trying, we finally got him in custody. Sadly, Mr. Chisti had passed away,
40:07so he never would find out that Shaheen Mahmood had been arrested. D.C. Craig Briggs went to see the
40:15family and he gave the news to Shafiq. And in a little twist of fate, Shafiq actually rang the family
40:24liaison officer, which is usually the opposite way around. So Shafiq told him the news that
40:29Shaheen Mahmood had been arrested. The family were immensely grateful for the outcome.
40:40We never gave up. Police never gave up. They continued with their investigation and finally
40:54they brought him over. They put their wholehearted trust in us and in return,
41:00we were able to celebrate the success of the outcome with them. And from that point onwards,
41:05the role again commenced and back with the job. Usually the investigations last between,
41:13I don't know, six to 12 months. The Birkby House fire ones lasted, for me, 23 years.
41:26We started the same procedure again, Tugumshire Crown Court. They were pleased to be there to give
41:33evidence at court. And they were pleased that at last, they could at least say goodbye to the
41:39investigation. They were good that after 17 years, the same people were all there. We were all there
41:47together. D.C. Briggs was called to go into court. So it was nice for everybody who was involved in the
41:52initial investigation to be there and back for the family. I was called to give evidence at the trial of
41:58Shaheed Mohammed. It was quite satisfying to see him facing justice finally. It was hard to remember
42:06everything that you'd done 17 years previously, but I felt a great duty to the Chisty family to make
42:17sure that I got it right, to make sure that this man wasn't going anywhere other than to prison.
42:28The jury went out to deliberate and we were all sat with the family thinking,
42:34come on, because the quicker the jury are back, the better. And we were all waiting for the
42:41conviction that it was electric.
42:49When they give that result of guilty, it was fantastic. I was so pleased for the family.
42:55That was great when the jury read that out. I remember just feeling very emotional,
43:01thinking or realising this is the end of a long, long road.
43:08The judge gave his sentencing. It was 23 years for the murder of eight people.
43:17He could only sentence on the guidelines that were in place in 2002, 2003. The unduly lenient sentence
43:26was increased from 23 years to 27 years.
43:32I don't think Shaheed Mohammed had any change in his demeanour when he was sentenced for the murder
43:36of eight people. No, no reaction.
43:52Still can't comprehend that this happened to our family.
43:55Over trivial things which were between two other individuals or families.
44:00And whenever I miss my parents, my siblings, I turn to my, my children,
44:11my wife and that takes my mind away.
44:20Baby, pleasure. Hopefully to see you.
44:23Good to see you too.
44:24Do you well, buddy?
44:30Shafiq, the first time I met you was when we came to see you in hospital when you were in
44:35Manchester. I don't even think you were probably aware that we were there.
44:40No.
44:41But, sir, you were in a bad way.
44:44I was, I think, unconscious most of the time.
44:48Eight people lost their lives in this horrendous, unnecessary and evil attack.
44:53You've been incredible, Shafiq.
44:55And that was very tough.
44:56I know.
44:57Last time I spoke to people, babe.
44:58It's never going to be easy.
45:00Never will be that you've been incredible all the way through.
45:03Dealing with such a horrific investigation is hard for anybody.
45:08Look at how far you've come, though. Look at you now.
45:11You've got your little babies.
45:14Babies that are not so babies.
45:16And that's what keeps me going.
45:18Yeah.
45:19The family, a new family.
45:20And children.
45:23Yeah.
45:24Yeah.
45:24In this case, because it was such a horrific offence, and because the investigation lasted
45:30for nearly 20 years, you tend to live the investigation.
45:38Being a family liaison officer is one of the best jobs ever in the police, because you are in
45:45such a privileged position to get to know people at the worst, and hopefully to see them come out
45:53the other end on the road to recovery and learning to live with a new form of normal.
46:01I can't thank you enough.
46:07Without that help and support, we would have struggled.
46:11The Chisties are very, very special, and they'll always be special to me.
46:15Good for them.
46:28Thankfully, God惡 Plus, in dilemmas,
46:29I knew I should find the place to live with a new form of sorrow.
46:32Do they help your boys?
46:34I can't do it.
46:37And the first day, it will be an earthquake sources,
46:39and they'll never be afraid of them.
46:41Do you think you'll find the 및, or you know what?
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