Section:GDN 1N PaGe:16 Edition Date:190808 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 7/8/2019 17:55 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
- The Guardian Thursday 8 August 2019
(^16) National
Union action
in Thames
Barrier pay
row likely
to escalate
Arsonist
jailed for 23
years for
attack that
killed eight
Mattha Busby
Staff at the Thames Barrier could
escalate their pay dispute with the
Environment Agency after three
months of industrial action, a trade
union said yesterday.
Unison said real-terms pay had
been fall ing over the past decade for
its members working at one of the larg-
est movable fl ood barriers in the world,
so it was considering asking them to
withdraw from incident response
PA Media
A murderer who killed fi ve children
and three adults in a house fi re 17 years
ago has been jailed for at least 23 years.
Eight members of the Chishti fam-
ily died when Shahid Mohammed , 37,
carried out the attack with other men
following a long-running and bitter
family dispute.
The victims were asleep at their
home in Osborne Road in Birkby, Hud-
dersfi eld , when petrol bombs were
thrown in to the property and petrol
was poured through the letterbox.
The fi ve children who died with
their mother, uncle and grand-
mother stood little chance of escaping
the blaze, prosecutors told Leeds
crown court.
Mohammed had previously been
investigated by the police for his role in
setting the fi re, but while others stood
trial in 2003 he skipped bail and fl ed
to Pakistan. After more than a decade
on the run, he was extradited back to
the UK last year.
The four-week trial heard how
Mohammed had taken against his sis-
ter’s boyfriend, Saud Pervez. One of
the people who died in the fi re in May
2002, Mohammed Ateeq-Ur-Rehman,
18, was the likely target of the attack,
prosecutors said, as he had played
an “active part” in maintaining that
relationship.
Yesterday, Mohammed was jailed
for life with a minimum of 23 years,
having been convicted of eight counts
of murder and a single charge of con-
spiracy to commit arson with intent to
endanger life.
The victims included Ateeq-Ur-
Rehman ’s sister Nafeesa Aziz , 35,
and her children, Tayyaba Batool,
13, Rabina Batool , 10, Ateeqa Nawaz ,
fi ve, Aneesa Zawaz , two, and Najee-
bah Nawaz , who was six months old.
Ateeq-Ur-Rehman ’s mother, Zaib-
Un-Nisa, 54, died in hospital after
jumping out of a window in an eff ort
to escape.
Sentencing Mohammed, Mr Justice
Spencer told Leeds crown court that,
following the attack, the home was a
“burning inferno”.
cover for a longer period in September.
The action would fall short of a strike
because the workers would work the
normal hours in their contracts but
would refus e to take on additional
jobs that are not mandatory.
Unison members employed by
the Environment Agency have been
withdrawing from incident response
rosters on one or two days a week as
part of eff orts to force an improvement
to a 2018 pay off er. The union said the
off er gave an average rise of 1.3% to
those not working in core teams and
amounted to the 10th year of pay cuts.
He said: “Those left behind to grieve
will never come to terms with their
loss. Words cannot express the depth
of their pain and distress.”
The judge said that, had Moham-
med not fl ed to Pakistan, he would
have given the family closure and pre-
vented them from waiting more than
a decade for justice.
“Instead they have had to live for all
these years with the knowledge that
one of the men principally responsible
for these wicked murders had not been
brought to justice,” he added.
The judge seemed visibly emo-
tional as he praised those who had
survived the fi re, pausing as he spoke
and speaking with a broken voice.
He said: “I know that they would
have gladly given their own lives to
save the others, if possible.”
One surviving member of the fam-
ily, Siddiqah Aziz , told jurors how
she had managed to save her father,
Abdul Chishti , from the fi re but was
prevented from coming to the aid of
other family members when she was
met by a wall of fl ames.
She said: “When I went downstairs,
the smoke was coming through the
front room. I got my dad through to
the cellar, because he was really weak,
and I came back for the others.
“But when I came back, the fi re was
too strong, it was too much.”
Alistair MacDonald QC, prosecut-
ing, said: “All those who were upstairs
were overwhelmingly likely to be
trapped on the upper fl oors by the fi re
that rapidly developed once the pet-
rol had been ignited.”
A year after the killings, three men
from Huddersfi eld were convicted of
their involvement : Shaied Iqbal was
found guilty of eight counts of murder,
and Shakiel Shazad and Nazar Hus-
sain were convicted of manslaughter.
MacDonald had said that the attack
had been “carefully planned”, and that
Iqbal and Mohammed had discussed
the size of the fl ames together as they
were driven from the scene.
Despite his attempts to evade jus-
tice, Mohammed was traced and
arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in
January 2015.
After being held in prison, he was
extradited to the UK in October last
year to be charged with the murders
and appear in court.
Andrew Dobbie of Unison said:
“This pay settlement imposed on staff
was another slap in the face for staff
hit hard by a decade of austerity, and
amounts to a real-terms pay cut.
“Employees do not take action
lightly but will not do work above
and beyond what is in their contracts.
The government and the agency must
deliver a fair pay rise. Staff who work
hard to maintain vital fl ood responses
and protect the public are not prepared
to accept another fi nancial blow.”
The union said the industrial
action would be suspended if the
Environment Agency (EA) off ered
what staff deemed to be a fair rise.
The EA has lost almost 1,000 staff
in a transfer to the Department for the
Environment, Food and Rural Aff airs ,
since 2016 as part of eff orts to save
Defra £124m. Cuts to the EA’s budget
mean it may not be able to aff ord
prospective pay increases without a
funding injection, said Unison.
The Thames Barrier protect s Lon-
don from fl ooding in the event of tidal
surges. More than 500,000 homes, the
Houses of Parliament and 16 hospitals
are among those on an “at risk” list.
▲ Shahid Mohammed was caught
after nearly 13 years on the run
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