Birkby house killer Nazar Hussain is ‘a victim of miscarriage of justice’ appeal is told

Nov 6 2009 by Joanne Douglas, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

A man jailed for killing eight members of a Birkby family is the victim of a miscarriage of justice, London’s Court of Appeal was told.

Nazar Hussain, of Crosland Moor, is currently serving 18 years after being found guilty of eight counts of manslaughter at Leeds Crown Court in 2003.

He is challenging his convictions and senior judges were told yesterday that key forensic evidence was contaminated.

At the same trial in 2003, Shakiel Shazad was also convicted of eight counts of manslaughter while Shaied Iqbal was found guilty of eight counts of murder.

A fourth man, Shahid Mohammed, is wanted in connection with the blaze but has gone on the run.

Shazad and Iqbal set fire to a family home in Osborne Road, Birkby, in May 2002 killing three generations of the same family – including five young children.

They were Muhammad Ateeq-ur-Rehman, 18, Nefessa Aziz, 35, Tayyaba Batool, 13, Rabia Batool, 10, Ateeqa Nawaz, five, Aneesa Nawaz, two, and six-month-old Najeeba Nawaz. Zaib-un-Nisa, 54, died in hospital a week later.

It was alleged that Hussain was involved too.

Judges at London’s Court of Appeal were told that key forensic evidence which linked Hussain to the crime had become ‘contaminated’ in a Huddersfield laboratory.

Jerome Lynch QC, for Hussain, said that petrol vapours had leaked from one evidence bag into another, falsely implicating Hussain and wrongly leaving him in the dock.

Although he admitted being present at the scene of the attack, Hussain maintained at his trial that all he intended to do was burn cars and had no intention of, or involvement in, fire bombing of the property.