Extended family and friends made repeated appeals to help find ‘precious’ boy’s killers

IN THE days and weeks that followed the killing Aamir’s parents, three sisters, extended family and friends made repeated appeals to the public for help to find their “precious” boy’s killers.

With her parents at first too distraught to speak publicly, Aamir’s sister Nishat stepped in to tell a press conference at Cardiff Central police station that her little brother was “a friend” and “something precious that we will miss”.

Police issued descriptions of two men they wanted to speak to while a £10,000 reward was offered and calls flooded into the BBC’s Crimewatch programme. Rumours swirled as to who was behind the attack.

These intensified when the T&A stores shop in Salisbury Road in Cathays was cordoned off for several days as forensic experts searched for clues.

They were following a tip from the owner of the store – father-of-two Zaid Akbar. He had trawled through hours of CCTV footage after his mother Sarwar Noor, then 70, recognised descriptions of the men reported in the Echo.

Speaking at the time, he said: “I was reading an article in the Echo and a description of these people was detailed in that. I read it out and my mum said it sounded like similar people who came into the shop.”

Sarwar told Zaid how the two men had asked for tape and gloves before leaving with only a packet of cigarettes.

Zaid gave this intelligence to the authorities and, days later, Ben Hope, 39, and Jason Richards, 38, were arrested by South Wales Police.

The pair seemed to have no relation to Aamir and his family. While Mr and Mrs Ahmad and their children were respected and well-liked, Richards operated in the city’s underworld.

He met co-defendant Ben Hope in prison and they went on to form a drug-dependent friendship outside.

Such was Richards’ level of addiction that he depended on Hope to inject heroin into otherwise unreachable parts of his anatomy after the veins in his arm collapsed.

Hope himself was no stranger to the police. He was jailed for six years in 1997 for kidnapping and robbing a couple walking along a Cardiff street.

After shouting racist abuse from his car he attacked them, forced both into the vehicle, and drove off at speed, later crashing. Hope and an accomplice then made off on foot.

While in jail he broke the nose of a prison guard and once released he sprayed a noxious liquid in a security guard’s face after he was caught shoplifting. He was later convicted of possessing an offensive weapon and sentenced to a community order and drug rehabilitation programme.

Seventeen days after Aamir’s murder the team of detectives working on the case made a breakthrough – a Drunk Punk top was found by on the Taff embankment.

This contained DNA that would prove vital in the case against Hope and Richards.