UK: Campaign to free Zoora Shah
01 November 1998
Zoora Shah was jailed at Leeds crown court in December 1993 after killing Mohammed Azam, a "friend" who was persistently abusive, in an act of utter desperation. The SBS and lawyers for Zoora are making depositions to Jack Straw regarding the 20-year tariff imposed on her by the previous Home Secretary.
Zoora is a non-literate woman from Pakistan who came to Bradford, West Yorkshire, in the early 1970s to enter into an arranged marriage. Her husband was abusive, cruel and violent towards her. He forced her to undergo several abortions to avoid having female children. Eventually he left her and his family threw her onto the streets. Zoora found herself destitute, with three children.
In 1980 she accepted the help of Mohammed Azam in order to try to gain some security for her children. As she was unable to get a mortgage, Azam helped her to buy her own house, in his name. Zoora paid the deposit and the mortgage. But Azam began to demand sex from Zoora. He became abusive and brutal, often forcing her to have sex with him several times a day. This abuse continued for over 10 years, during which time Azam was convicted of dealing heroin.
When she began to suspect that Azam had designs on her daughters, this was the last straw. In April 1992 she gave him a large dose of arsenic, (which she had originally obtained to administer to him in non-lethal doses, in order to render him impotent, in the hope that the sexual abuse would stop). She did not know it, but this time the dose was lethal and Azam died the same day. Zoora was charged with a number of offences, including murder and attempted murder, to which she pleaded guilty.
At her trial she was too frightened and ashamed to give details of her sexual history, fearing that such revelations would endanger her daughters and their future prospects of marriage. She was given a life sentence with a tariff of 20 years. On April 30 1998 Zoora lost her appeal to overturn her conviction. The Court dismissed her testimony, which she gave for the first time, as "not capable of belief" on the grounds that she had originally lied to the police. The Court appeared also to be largely dismissive of the independent evidence of medical and lay witnesses regarding Zoora's mental state at the time of the killing and throughout the course of her relationship with Azam.
The SBS have argued that the proceedings of the appeal have serious implications for civil liberties. Indeed the fact that Zoora was denied the right to put forward a defence at appeal, which was not available to her at her trial due to her traumatised state and her fears for her daughters, implies that a defence to murder which is not raised at trial cannot be raised at any later stage unless there are exceptional circumstances. SBS comment;
"There is no indication as to what constitutes exceptional circumstances, but it seems to restrict the term to the narrow condition of severe mental illness".
For more information on the campaign or to make a donation, contact Southall Black Sisters, 52 Norwood Road, Southall, Middlesex. Tel. 0181 571 9595.