Honour Killing in the UK...

How sick is this?

Two men murdered a six-year-old girl by setting fire to her house to warn her brother off a relationship he was having, a court heard yesterday.

Alisha Begum suffered 95 per cent burns and died after a masked man burst into her home, sprayed petrol around and set it alight. The fire spread so quickly that members of her family had to jump out of upstairs windows to escape.

Birmingham Crown Court heard the attack was planned by Hussain Ahmed, a 26-year-old dentist, and Daryll Tuzzio, 18, after Ahmed found out his 15-year-old sister was seeing Alisha's brother, Abdul Hamid, 21. Yesterday the two men went on trial accused of murder and the attempted murder of nine of the girl's relatives who escaped from the blazing house in Aston, Birmingham.

Adrian Redgrave, prosecuting, said: "One hears of so-called honour killings though one may wonder how by any stretch of the imagination there can be any honour in what happened here, resulting in the death of a six-year-old child.