'Honour' revenge father jailed

Mohammed Arshad was sentenced by judge Lady Smith

A businessman who tried to hire a hitman after his daughter married without his permission has been jailed for seven years.

Mohammed Arshad, of Landsdowne Square, Dundee, was given a custodial sentence despite a letter from his daughter saying she had forgiven him and did not hold any ill will.

A devout Muslim, Arshad viewed the marriage as dishonourable.

But during sentencing at the High Court in Edinburgh on Thursday, judge Lady Smith said there was no excuse for what he had done.

The 49-year-old, who has served as a justice of the peace and on Tayside Racial Equality Council, put a price of £1,000 on the head of Abdullah Yasin, whom he wanted "removed from this earth" after discovering that he had married his daughter in September 2001.

At a previous hearing, the High Court in Edinburgh heard that Mr Yasin, 26, was from a different caste and in a culture of arranged marriages.

The rules had been broken by marrying a younger daughter before her older sister had settled with a husband.

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Arshad was trapped in an undercover police operation but the question of how officers became involved was not revealed during the trial.

The supposed hitman was a detective and the conversation between him and Arshad was secretly taped.

It was a rare case said detective superintendent Colin McCashey

Mr Yasin told the court that he and Insha Arshad carried on their love affair at a distance. He had tried unsuccessfully to persuade his and her family to agree to a marriage.

Fearing she may be sent back to Pakistan, they married in secret in a register office in Edinburgh then went their separate ways, hoping to secure the Arshads' blessing and a full Muslim wedding.

Arshad did not give evidence at the trial but his lawyer argued that his client's sometimes rambling answers to the police officer's questions on the poor quality tape did not prove he was trying to have his son-in-law murdered.

Detective Superintendent Colin McCashey, from Tayside Police, said: "The case was very rare and in fact I know of no similar case in Tayside. It was a very complex investigation. But in this case a more serious crime was in fact averted."