Shafilea Ahmed death: Sister 'wrote of killing'

A sister of Shafilea Ahmed gave a friend letters about her parents "killing Shafilea", a court has heard.

Shafilea's parents Iftikhar, 52, and Farzana, 49, deny murdering their daughter by suffocating her at their home in Warrington, Cheshire, in 2003.

The prosecution at Chester Crown Court alleges Mevish Ahmed, 21, wrote letters to a friend in 2008 which contained details of her sister's death.

However, Ms Ahmed said they were "free writing" and "fiction".

Prosecutor Andrew Edis said the documents had only recently been shown to police by Mevish Ahmed's friend, Shahin Munir.

He alleged to Ms Ahmed, who was 12 when Shafilea disappeared, that they were "letters that you wrote to your friend about your sister's death".

"These pieces of paper were about your parents killing Shafilea," he added.

However, she replied that they were "not letters about my sister's death, they are free writing".

"I write fiction, I write it quite a lot. Me and [sister] Alesha used to write fictional things and make-believe," she said.

"It's not necessarily associated with ourselves."

Ms Ahmed added that she had last seen Shafilea on the evening of 11 September 2003.

She told the jury that she had presumed Shafilea had "run away" and was staying with school friends.

She told the jury that this was "something that had happened before".

Mevish Ahmed is the second of Shafilea Ahmed's sisters to have appeared in court.

Previously, Alesha Ahmed has claimed she saw her parents Iftikhar, 52, and Farzana, 49, suffocate Shafilea with a plastic bag.

The prosecution alleges Mr and Mrs Ahmed murdered their "Westernised" daughter because they believed her conduct was bringing shame on the family.

Her remains were found on the banks of the River Kent in Cumbria in 2004.

The trial continues.