A COUPLE accused of murder were acting in a “very agitated” way in the aftermath of the death, a court heard.

Yasira Pervez, 22, and Ian Priddle, 46, visited a village on the outskirts of Islamabad in the hours after the death of her husband Khuram Mukhtar, 21.

One of the people who took them on the trip, Tanveer Ahamad, said: “Yas looked upset. Priddle was upset as well. He was smoking a lot in an agitated way.

“I took them to a house for something to eat but neither of them ate much.

“Priddle had one or two spoons and Yas had two spoons as well.

“After that they said they wanted to go back to the hotel. She said Priddle wasn’t feeling very well.”

Peter Wright QC told the court that the trip was a scheme by the pair to inv-ent an alibi in the hours after they killed Mr Mukh-tar in another hotel, the Comfort Inn, Rawalpindi, in December 2006.

Mr Ahamad, who was speaking at the trial at Manchester Crown Court, said that he had met the couple at the Four Season’s Hotel in Islamabad where they were staying and where he worked.

The duty room boy, said he had offered to clean Pervez and Priddle’s room but they had “aggressively” refused.

But he took them on a trip to his home village after they asked if they could visit.

Pervez, of Pendle Street Accrington, and Priddle, of Jubilee Road, Haslingden, are accused of murdering Mr Mukhtar by stabbing him.

Pervez had only married Mr Mukhtar, her cousin, in an arranged ceremony some 15 months earlier.

Mr Wright said that Pervez and Priddle had started a relationship in the UK and “plotted to kill” Mr Mukhtar.

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 respons-ibility 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.

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

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