A HUSBAND was stabbed to death by his wife and her lover after being lured to a Pakistan hotel room, a jury was told.

Yasira Pervez, 22, and Ian Priddle, 46, “plotted to kill” Khuram Mukhtar, 21, the court heard.

They were said to have left him bleeding and dying with chest and abdomen wounds which had damaged his lungs, stomach, liver and heart.

Pervez, of Pendle Street Accrington, and Priddle, of Jubilee Road, Haslingden, then fled back to England, the court heard.

But they were arrested at Manchester Airport on New Year’s Eve as soon as their plane landed.

The pair yesterday went on trial for murder, a charge they both deny.

Peter Wright QC, prosecuting, said Pervez and Mr Mukhtar had wed 18 months previously in an arranged marriage.

But the jury was told she settled on the ‘permanent solution’ of murder after having an affair with Priddle.

Mr Wright said: “She wanted to get rid of Mr Mukhtar and in Priddle she found a man ready willing and able to do her bidding."

He told a jury at Manchester Crown Court that Pervez and Priddle were "jointly responsible" for the killing in a Rawalpindi hotel room, on December 30, 2006.

Mr Wright said: "Neither defendant accepts responsibility for the murder of Mr Mukhtar.

"Yasira Pervez blames Ian Priddle and Ian Priddle denies being present in the room.

"The truth is that they planned to take the life of Mr Mukhtar. They planned it together and they went about it together.

"Irrespective of who stabbed him, they killed him together.

"They travelled there together in order to kill and they succeeded in doing so.

"Having stabbed him they fled the room and left him to die.

"For reasons that may never fully be understood they decided that the solution to their problems lay in removing Mr Mukhtar from the equation.

"In affairs of the heart common sense and logic are sometimes lost.”

Mr Wright said that Pervez and Mr Mukhtar, who are cousins, were married in an arranged ceremony in April or May 2006 in a ceremony in his home village of Bhandana near Rawalpindi.

They stayed together for a month before Pervez returned to her home in Accrington.

Her new husband, who did not have a visa to travel to the UK, remained in Pakistan.

The court heard that their relationship was a happy one and they spoke almost every day on the telephone.

At home Pervez was making arrangements for her husband's visa application, a lengthy process which involved collecting details of Mr Mukhtar's living arrangements, job and background, the court heard.

Mr Wright said that by the end of the year she had started a relationship with Priddle, a divorcee twice her age, who she worked with at a printing business.

Priddle then bought a Happy Shopper in Blackburn, which Pervez worked in for him.

Mr Wright said: "Work was in place to arrange for Mr Mukhtar to come to England to live.

"However she (Pervez) had other plans and they didn't include continuing to be married to Mr Mukhtar.

"She could have taken steps to stop the her husband's visa application.

"But she settled on a permanent solution. She had met Priddle and was in a relationship with him.

"By December 2006 they had planned a trip to Pakistan, but it wasn't a holiday that they had in mind but rather the murder of Mr Mukhtar.

"Pervez and Priddle purchased return flights to Islamabad but they had no itinerary, and no hotel booked when they got there."

He said that when they arrived Priddle was ‘bored’. They had been to visit several locations in the city but he was not enjoying the trip.

Then, on the day before they were due to return, Mr Wright said that Pervez contacted her husband using a mobile phone with a Pakistan sim card.

He said she asked to meet him in Rawalpindi, saying that she had just arrived in the neighbouring city of Islamabad as a surprise.

Mr Wright said: "Pervez asked her husband to meet her alone.

"He dressed in new clothes and travelled to Rawalpindi. He was excited to see his wife."

They arranged to meet in room 109 of the Comfort Inn Hotel, a basement hotel where rooms can be booked by the hour, Mr Wright said.

Mr Mukhtar arrived first and a member of staff at the venue reported seeing a young Asian woman and an older man go the room after him.

The worker, Mr Wright said, had to leave to run an errand but he later spotted the same two people running away from the room.

Mr Wright said: "He went to investigate and he saw that the door to the room was open.

"He saw Mr Mukhtar lying partly on the bed and partly on the floor.

"He called the emergency services and along with the manager of the hotel took him to the hospital that was only a short distance away.

"In the car he was breathing but it was laboured."

He said that traffic was very bad on the day due to Eid celebrations and it took over 20 minutes to reach the hospital. Mr Mukhtar did not say anything to the two men and was pronounced dead at the hospital.

In the aftermath of the stabbing Pervez and Priddle began their plans for an elaborate alibi, Mr Wright said.

They went back to their hotel, the Four Seasons in Islamabad, and began a conversation with several members of staff. They asked if they could visit the home village of the staff and all went along for the evening.

Pervez and Priddle spent the night at a small village outside the capital with several members of staff before getting a taxi back to the hotel. In the early hours of the next morning they took another taxi to the airport and a flight back to Manchester.

As investigations began in Rawlpindi the finger was soon pointed at Pervez, the jury was told. Contact was made by detectives in Pakistan with the British authorities and Pervez and Priddle were arrested before they reached passport control.

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