A FATHER who ordered his two teenage sons to carry out the so-called honour killing of an Oxford student who made his daughter pregnant was told yesterday that he must serve a minimum of 20 years in jail.

A High Court judge told Chomir Ali, 44, that there was “no honour in murder”.

The body of Arash Ghorbani-Zarin, a 19-year-old electrical engineering student, was found with 46 stab wounds after he was ambushed in his car in November last year.

Mr Justice Goss described it as a cold-blooded killing, adding that “the sooner the term honour killings are seen for the grotesque misnomer they are, the better”. He told Ali, a Bangladeshi-born waiter: “Far from vindicating your family’s honour you have permanently dishonoured your family with the stain of murder.”

His two sons, Mohammed Mujibar Rahman, 19, and Mamnoor Rahman, 16, who stood alongside Ali in the dock at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, were jailed for a minimum of 16 and 14 years respectively.

The older boy held the victim down while Mamnoor, who was only 15 at the time, stabbed him so furiously that the tip of the knife snapped.

Ali, who was described during the trial as a bully who tried to brainwash his children, was appalled when his daughter, Manna Begum, 20, resisted his plans for an arranged marriage.

He claimed that it embarrassed the family to see her kissing Mr Ghorbani-Zarin and holding his hand.

When he learnt of her pregnancy he sent his sons to murder the gifted young student, but then botched the attempt to hide the knife and his sons’ bloodstained clothing.

After the killing Ali paid for his daughter to terminate her pregnancy.

“Honour killings” are on the increase in Britain, and detectives described this as one of the most tragic cases they had encountered.

The father of the murdered student, Raheem Ghorbani-Zarin, left the courtroom after hearing the sentence saying, “This is not justice”.

“I wanted life to mean life — at least 25 years so my boy can rest under the ground.

“They have taken my boy’s life away. He is not here, but they are still here. They can still breathe.”

The judge issued a stern warning that no cultural beliefs could ever justify such a heinous crime. He told the three that if a Muslim girl rejected the tradition of an arranged marriage, “she is, and must be, free to follow her individual choice”.

“Violence, or the threat of violence, to enforce compliance is unacceptable and it will be severely dealt with.”

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