Mamnoor Rahman: 'Honour killing' son set for prison release

A man who was ordered by his father to carry out an "honour killing" when he was a teenager has been cleared for release from prison.

Chomir Ali told his sons Mujibar Rahman and Mamnoor Rahman to kill a university student who had made his daughter pregnant.

The body of Arash Ghorbani-Zarin, 19, was found with 46 stab wounds in his car in Oxford in November 2004.

The Parole Board has decided Mamnoor Rahman is "suitable" for release.

Mamnoor Rahman was 15 when he and his brother Mujibar Rahman carried out the killing due to the supposed "shame and dishonour" brought on the family.

Manna Begum, then 20, had been dating Ghorbani-Zarin, an Iranian Muslim who was studying electrical engineering at Oxford Brookes University.

The pair met in 2003 through school friends, who described them as devoted to each other, with Miss Begum becoming pregnant in August 2004.

This angered her father, a Bangladeshi waiter, who already had an arranged marriage planned for her.

Ali and his two sons were found guilty of murder in 2005 at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, where Mr Justice Gross called it a "cold-blooded intentional killing".

He told them: "Far from vindicating your family's honour you have permanently dishonoured your family with the stain of murder."

Mamnoor, now aged 32, was ordered to serve a minimum of 14 years behind bars.

A Parole Board document said at the time of his offending he had "difficulties managing his anger", a "tendency to brood on particular issues" and a willingness to use violence and carry a weapon.

But he had since "come to accept responsibility for the murder", it said.

He was moved to an open prison in 2017 and "there had been no concerns about his behaviour", according to the report.

A spokesman said decisions were "solely focused on what risk a prisoner could represent to the public if released and whether that risk is manageable in the community".

The release is subject to licence conditions, including living at a certain address with limits on who Mamnoor can contact, what he can do, and where he can go.

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