Man Strangled His Brother In-law To Death And Dumped Him In A Car

A man who strangled his teenage brother-in-law for reasons that remain a mystery has been jailed for 20 years.

Gol Zazai, 30, was sentenced on Monday, April 4, 2022, for killing Najeebullah Nekzad, 19, on August 31, 2019, and making it look like a suicide, with empty bottles of whisky and a decoy ligature left in the car with his body.

A PCSO making routine enquiries found his body in the passenger seat of a silver Fiat Punto in Huddersfield, Yorkshire.

At the sentencing on Monday, details of the “two-man job” were laid bare.

Mr Nekzad’s older brother Nasrullah was quizzed by police as a possible suspect but fled to his native Afghanistan and was described by the judge at Leeds Crown Court as the prime mover in the murder with Gol Zazai the accomplice.

Zazai was also questioned and later charged with the murder almost two years on.

The court was told ligature marks were found on the deceased’s neck and that the murder had been a “two-man job.”

The three men had all worked at a takeaway restaurant owned by Nasrullah called Chick Corner in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, UK.

“His parents will have no answer to their grandson when he asks when will he meet his daddy,” Justice Stacey said of the victim’s parents and son as he sentenced the convicted.

Najeebullah Nekzad’s father Sayed Rahman Nekzad said his son left Afghanistan to make a new life and when his little boy asks when “he is going to see my father I don’t have the courage to tell him he will never see him.”

He continued: “As a family, we feel guilty that we were thousands of miles away in Afghanistan. The pain we feel as a family we can’t describe in words.”

The hearing heard Nasrullah took out repatriation and burial insurance in the days before the attack, but there was no clear motive for the murder.

Justice Stacey said all efforts to return Nasrullah to the UK had failed.

She said: “Nasrullah had carefully planned to murder his brother that day. I find that you were not the one who planned his murder but Nasrullah enlisted you to carry it out.”

The judge told the hearing Najeebullah was strangled from behind in the vehicle with a ligature, which was later discarded on the moors.

Jailing Zazai for 20 years she said the 278 days he had spent on remand would be taken into account.