The missed chances and missteps that led to ‘possessive’ husband’s brutal killing of Sohbia
A LITANY of missed opportunities from multiple authorities dominated the years leading up to a Derby man brutally murdering his wife, a damning report has revealed.
Atual Mustafa beat his second wife Sohbia Khan to death in late May 2017, in Pear Tree Crescent, Normanton.
Mustafa, 36 at the time, was jailed for life in May 2018, for the murder and sentenced to a minimum of 32 years in jail. The savage attack left Sohbia with 36 injuries.
This incident had occurred around a month after Mustafa’s marriage to Sohbia through the Muslim practice of nikah.
In February 2008, Mustafa, also previously known as Amir Mustafa, had been convicted for assaulting his first wife and over a four-day ordeal subjected her to a prolonged series of “sadistic” assaults, repeatedly punched her, shaved off her hair and eyebrows, set her on fire and threatened to kill her.
The treatment and supervision of Mustafa by a range of authorities following his 2008 conviction and leading up to the 2017 murder is the subject of a new independent report.
This 105-page study was commissioned by NHS England and carried out by Niche Health and Care Consultants. It details chilling details about Mustafa’s past, his assessments by officials over the years and a number of missed opportunities, missteps and miscommunication.
This includes a repeated “overreliance” by health officials on Mustafa to disclose concerns about his own behaviour and mental state – and risks he may pose to others.
It also includes a repeated insufficient amount of consideration given to the risk he specifically posed to women, along with the impact stress has on his violent behaviour.
Psychologist notes in a report durstressors ing Mustafa’s time at Wathword Prison, Rotherham, shortly before his transfer to Cygnet Hospital in Derby in early 2013, tell in detail the risk he poses.
The prison psychologist had written: “There is a risk of psychological and emotional abuse within the context of an intimate relationship.
“This may typically involve, although not restricted to; implicit threats of harm or violence, intimidation, insults, excessive monitoring of behaviour, isolating behaviour or withdrawal from supportive networks, financial abuse and using male privilege, all of which will render his partner’s life fearful and miserable. These behaviours are likely to increase when, for example, [Mustafa] feels insecure, criticised or jealous. Psychological and emotional abuse will likely start as soon as [Mustafa] perceives he ‘possesses’ his partner, like the very start of a marriage for example.”
This report was written four years before Mustafa murdered Sohbia, whom he had married in her absence just four weeks before. The marriage process was called a nikah and involved Mustafa and two friends as witnesses. It is not clear if Sohbia was present, but tradition states this is not required.
Mustafa collected Sohbia from her home in Bradford and her family never saw her again.
Mustafa’s brother and sister both saw Sohbia on May 27, the day she was murdered, with the brother saying he had seen her wearing a headscarf obscuring her face, and the sister saying she had been repeatedly asked to stay longer by Sohbia.
The report also details there was no evidence that concerns of Mustafa’s first victim were taken into consideration in the decision to move him from Rotherham to Derby. She opposed the move due to still having family in the city, a point Mustafa continued to lie about, saying she did not. This was never checked by the authorities, the report says.
A theme throughout the report is the lack of attention paid to potential
that could cause Mustafa to relapse, and potentially hurt women.
Stress in his personal and family life were seen as triggers, noted in assessments throughout 2015, including in July when he was discharged from Cygnet to community care monitored by Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.
He was discharged from hospital to live on his own for the first time in seven years, to the house at which he committed the 2008 assault on his first wife. It was in need of renovation due to disrepair. Months before, his father died after illness.
A January 2015 risk assessment, a few months before Mustafa was discharged into the community, con
cluded he was “likely” to commit emotional or physical abuse against a partner or ex-wife. It also said a “new relationship should trigger reassessment of risk”.
In monthly assessments, from April to July, one detailed: “If engaged in a close relationship and there was deterioration in his mental health state, there would be a high probability that he would engage in acts of violence against his partner within a couple of months.”
Mustafa was later found to have started his relationship with Sohbia around the same time he was discharged, after being in jail and hospital for almost a decade.
In June 2015, the month before his discharge, Mustafa had told officials about his anxiety over the house repairs and said he heard his father’s voice in his head.
The report found health officials involved in his care had no knowledge of his relationship with Sohbia, which led to their marriage in April 2017.
It says: “That he was able to develop a relationship, cohabit and marry without the knowledge of any of these services raises questions about the quality of supervision provided, and illustrates the extent to which he was able to conceal his behaviours from services.”
The report says the service from Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust was handled by a general team, with no specialised forensic team set up at the time for complex cases geared towards potentially violent offenders in the community.
An internal report from the trust, included in this review by Niche, concludes these staff “had little clarity, direction, support or supervision in terms of their roles, responsibilities and accountability in [Mustafa’s] care”.
One of the key takeaways in the report is a crucial missed opportunity, Niche says, relating to a sexual relationship Mustafa conducted with a health care worker at Cygnet Hospital in Derby.
The worker disclosed the relationship herself in October 2014, due to her fear of Mustafa. She was fired and the emphasis of reports at the time was that Mustafa was the victim, due to his mental health status.
What failed to be disclosed to the Ministry of Justice, the report says, was the staff member’s evidence. The report reveals she said Mustafa grabbed her phone while on escorted leave from hospital and took her number. She said Mustafa told her he had bugged her house, had her watched and smashed her phone.
It details, from a Cygnet internal review, that Mustafa’s “manipulative and intimidating and threatening behaviour in the relationship should have been seen as coercive and controlling”.
Three months later, in January 2015, the Ministry of Justice, unaware of the behaviour of Mustafa during the relationship with a staff member, agreed to a period of overnight leave from Cygnet to his parents’ house in Derby.
Shortly after his discharge and for much of the four months from August 2015 to January 2016, Mustafa was allowed to go to Pakistan to visit family. His father was ill and died on Christmas Day.
Mustafa had initially been given leave to go to Pakistan for a few weeks, before returning. After that he was given leave to go for six weeks, but instead chose to book a four-month trip.
The report says Mustafa had a “pattern of pushing boundaries” at Cygnet and in community healthcare, along with trying to ingratiate himself with staff. This and the nature of the relationship with the staff member may have meant the Ministry of Justice would not have approved the initial Pakistan trip, the report suggests.
A damning indictment in the report’s conclusions is that officials placed too much of a burden on Mustafa to reveal his own issues, which may have in turn seen him brought back to hospital.
It also says officials relied on Mustafa’s family to flag and identify concerns, instead of focusing on scrutinising him themselves.
The report says: “There was an unrealistic expectation that the family would tell the clinical team about his developing a relationship or not taking medication. His sisters and brother told us that they asked him about both of these issues, and were told aggressively that they should mind their own business, and he had told people what they needed to know.”
An internal report by Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, referenced by Niche, says the impact of the transition from hospital to the community for Mustafa was “underestimated”.
It also says there was a lack of appreciation that the trip to Pakistan should have been seen as a “significant event that would test his [Mustafa’s] coping mechanisms”.
An assessment of Mustafa in October 2015, on his brief return from Pakistan, said his violence towards women was directly influenced by his mental health.
Over the months in which Mustafa’s father was seriously ill and then died, there was a repeated lack of any investigation of Mustafa’s mental state, the report details.
The report says health officials at Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust were unaware whether there would be specific cultural dynamics to consider after the death of his father – when he became head of the family.
Mustafa’s family told the reviewer after he became head of the family he was “volatile and physically violent, unpredictable and aggressive”.
Cygnet also did not inform Mustafa’s GP about the crimes for which he was convicted in 2008, meaning they were unaware of his healthcare needs.
The report says Mustafa gave his GP a “highly sanitised” version of events in March 2015.
It also finds it “concerning” that Mustafa was described in an interview with them by senior Cygnet clinicians as a “perfect patient” who “had not put a foot wrong”, apart from the relationship with the member of staff.
The report says the “pattern of pushing boundaries” at Cygnet was at odds with the assessment of Mustafa being a “perfect patient”.
This includes him manipulating a female member of staff who was managing an authorised escort. This involved him getting into a car with his brother and asking for a lift back to the hospital along with the female member of staff.
It also includes being found with a smart phone in his ward, breaching the number of nights per week in which he could stay outside hospital, lying about helping out his parents when they had already gone to Pakistan, and frequent breaches banning him from being alone with children. The latter breach included Mustafa being listed as the point of contact at the schools at which his nieces and nephews attended.
The report says there was a “degree of skill in successful subversion of boundaries at Cygnet and in the community under the care of Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust” and that this was “not always communicated or addressed effectively”.
That he was able to develop a relationship, cohabit and marry without the knowledge of any of these services raises questions about the quality of supervision provided