Murder plot acid attacker jailed for 30 years

AN acid attacker who left a 25-year-old man severely disfigured in a horrific plot to avenge his family’s “dishonour” was jailed for 30 years yesterday.

Mohammed Vakas was found guilty by an Old Bailey jury of plotting to murder Awais Akram.

The victim was targeted because of his intimate relationship with Sadia Khatoon, 24, a married businesswoman he had met on Facebook, the court heard.

When her husband, Shakeel Abassi, and Vakas, her brother, found out about it, they got her to lure Akram out of his flat to the scene of the attack.

There the victim was beaten and stabbed before Vakas poured concentrated sulphuric acid over his head, leaving him with 47% burns and fighting for his life.

Vakas, 26, of Walthamstow, north east London, was found guilty of conspiring with Khatoon and her husband to murder Akram.

Fellow attackers Mohammed Adeel, 20, also of Walthamstow, and a 17-year-old youth, who can now be named as Fabion Kuci, of Harlesden, north-west London, were convicted of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm.

Adeel was jailed for 14 years and the youth was locked up for eight years.

Akram, who survived the attack but continues to undergo treatment for his injuries, has described how he was in so much pain at the time that he wanted to die.

Judge Brian Barker, the Common Sergeant of London, said: “The facts of this case are horrifying. This was a remorseless and a heartless plan.

“It was to punish and kill Mr Akram in the most cruel and sadistic way. The reason can be deduced as being an unacceptable relationship with Sadia Khatoon and Awais Akram. This was deemed to bring dishonour to her husband and to both families.”

When Khatoon’s family discovered the relationship they decided “that reputations could only be salvaged in one irreversible way”.

The judge said: “This was a terrible crime and all right-thinking citizens reject the premise on which it was done. There is no honour, and plots and actions such as this have no place in our society.”

Describing the harrowing evidence given by Akram, he said: “Few of us will have seen anything like that before and we must all hope we don’t see anything like that again.”

Akram has had “innumerable” operations and has suffered permanent scarring as well as being “deeply affected psychologically”, the judge said.

The victim suffers from a fear which be believes “will be there for the rest of his life”, he added.

“He did not die but his suffering then and since is almost impossible to imagine and he is left in a living nightmare.”

Vakas was a “major and crucial part of the conspiracy” and was expecting the victim to suffer “an agonising death”, the judge said, while Khatoon and her husband “were central to this plan and should have been in the dock”.

A witness said the victim looked like a “cross between a zombie from a horror movie and the Incredible Hulk” after the attack.