Man arrested over suitcase body

Adeeba was last seen on Valentine's Day

A 28-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after police confirmed a body washed up in the Thames was missing Adeeba Ahmed.

Mrs Ahmed, 27, from Slough, Berkshire, vanished on her way to a hairdresser's on Valentine's Day.

The Pakistani national was last seen after being dropped off by her husband in Hounslow, west London.

Her strangled body was found in a suitcase on the river bank at Barnes, south-west London, on Monday.

The body was discovered inside a large black Samsonite trolley suitcase by a passer-by and had not been dismembered, police said.

Detectives believe the Heathrow check-in clerk could have been dumped in the river somewhere else and washed up at Barnes on Sunday morning or earlier.

The case had been found, partly split open, on a mud bank beneath some railings.

Police said a formal identification was due to take place later on Wednesday.

Mrs Ahmed had planned to ask her husband to pick her up after visiting the hair salon and going shopping on Saturday.

But she still had not called by that evening when the couple had been planning to go out for dinner and she was reported missing in the early hours of 15 February.

Mrs Ahmed, originally from Feltham, moved to Slough with her husband in November of last year.

She worked as a check-in assistant at Heathrow's Terminal Three but had not reported for work this week and had not contacted friends or family members or responded to messages left on her mobile phone.

A neighbour of Mrs Ahmed said: "It's terrible. It has shaken us completely."