An unpleasant moment in Blackburn, Lancs.
Six siblings – all members of a Muslim family – have been jailed for what the judge described as the “sustained and brutal” attempted kidnap of a white woman who was having a relationship with their sister.
The victim, Sarah Harrison, 35, was in a relationship with Nazma Ditta, 28, and was targeted by members of her partner’s family as she left work in Blackburn Lancashire.
CCTV captured Harrison’s attackers approaching her and the violent struggled that followed as Ditta’s siblings sought to find out where Miss Harrison and their sister were living.
Footage of the broad daylight attack, which happened on June 20 last year, showed members of Miss Ditta’s family trying to bundle Miss Harrison into their car, along with shouts of “get her in, get her, you’ve messed with the wrong Muslims”. According to Preston Crown Court, Miss Harrison said she was worried that she would have acid thrown in her face.
Miss Harrison was attacked by sisters Ghazala Ditta, 31, Nighat Morris, 38, and Atfah Ditta, 32, and their brother Tahmoor Ditta, 26. When a work colleague of the victim tried to intervene, Tahmoor Ditta threatened them by brandishing a metal tool, while the three sisters punched and kicked Miss Harrison before attempting to drag her into a silver Toyota Corolla.
Harrison was able to resist being shoved into the car and her attackers gave up and drove off. But what a horrendous situation – a whole large family attacking one sister’s partner because of the usual horseshit.
In the days leading up to the attack, members of the Ditta family had confronted the victim at her workplace and asked her about the whereabouts of their sister.
They also asked her work colleagues about where she parked her car and waited at various locations for her to leave work. Miss Ditta had previously declined to have an arranged marriage and left home days before the attack to move in with Miss Harrison, although she pretended to her family that she had gone to Manchester for a new job.
Six of them were convicted – five sisters and one brother. All of them ganged up on her and tried to force her to live the life they wanted her to live instead of the life she wanted to live. She’s 28 years old.
Addendum: the Daily Mail has CCTV. One of the three sisters who attack Harrison is wearing a burqa, and she’s the one who punches her hard in the face, four times. Very devout.
I can easily believe her concern.
Yeah. All the more so if you watch the video. All three of them are holding her right arm, one of them keeps punching her on that arm, while the sister in the burqa delivers roundhouse after roundhouse to her face.
Religion is so inspiring.
This is a terrible story. Not surprisingly, I suppose, the first comment on the article linked comments on the sisters’ ugliness.
Because, apparently, the fact that this family are vicious, controlling, violent bigots isn’t bad enough. They’re ugly and that’s what matters.
It’s like human beings are competing to be the worst.
This is certainly a horrible story, and I feel nothing but sympathy for the victims. However, I confess that I may be a bad person, but when I see a story coming from Blackburn, Lancashire, I cannot help but check to see what influence the 4000 holes might have had on it.
I hope they’ll be in prison a long time.
Religion of peace, dontcha know.
The 4000 holes refer to potholes in the Blackburn roads.
Awful. Simply awful.
Well, they had to show they were more loyal to their religion than their family member. Now, they can be martyrs and the video goes viral. Maybe prison will give them the break from their apparently sheltered community and wake some of them up. One can hope.
Yes, this story is horrible and vile. I hope the family members are left to rot in prison for a long, long time, and that the victim (and her partner) are left to live long, happy lives in which no further incidents remotely like this occur.
That said, the author of this story is a racist piece of shit. There is no purpose, absolutely none, to emphasize the race of the victim in the first line of the story. The crime was motivated by homophobia sponsored by religious belief, not by racist ideology on the part of the attackers. It was beneath contempt, but the story was clearly written in a manner meant to evoke racial antagonism (and read the comments over there if you don’t think it succeeded–I jest, of course; never, ever read the comments).
No fault of yours, Ophelia–you didn’t write that story, and I have no doubt you would’ve simply identified the victim as a woman, not a ‘white woman’ if you had.
Yeah. It’s a chronic thing in UK reporting, from what I can see – that mixing of categories. It’s very common to talk about Muslims on the one hand and whites on the other, and it’s at least as common with people who consider themselves anti-racist (and anti-Orientalist, post-colonialist yadda yadda) as it is with racists.
I think the reporter was trying to say Harrison was in the category of “other” and couldn’t think of a better way to say it.