Anisah Ahmed, 33, launched an ‘evil’ plot to frame her lover Iqbal Mohammed
A scorned barrister who cried rape in an ‘evil’ plot to frame her lover after she found out he was married has today been jailed.
Anisah Ahmed, 33, met fellow barrister Iqbal Mohammed, 38, through LinkedIn more than six years ago and embarked upon a relationship with him in 2014.
However, it soon emerged that Mohammed was already married and the snubbed lawyer began a ‘comprehensive and orchestrated’ revenge campaign, falsely claiming she was raped.
Ahmed also staged her own kidnapping and stabbing, Oxford Crown Court heard.
She was today handed a discretionary life sentence with a minimum term of four years and six months.
Judge Michael Gledhill said: ‘It appears that Ahmed had no idea that Mohammed was married.
‘When she found out, she felt utterly betrayed and took her revenge by putting into effect a comprehensive and orchestrated plan to destroy him – both professionally and personally.’
The elaborate campaign of ruin began when Ahmed sent intimate messages detailing her affair with Mohammed to the victim’s wife and colleagues.
She later emailed his Head of Chambers demanding an investigation into his integrity, the court heard.
It was said Ahmed then created fake emails to support her false claims. These made it appear as though the victim was threatening her, amounting to ‘blackmail.’
Mohammed, who is a commercial barrister at St Philips Barristers, was arrested at work and taken to a police station, where he was locked in a cell for seven hours.
However, computer experts later found that the email evidence had been falsified and police instead arrested Ahmed for harassment.
Ahmed later admitted that she had created the fake emails but persisted in the lie that Mohammed was harassing her.
When it was decided to prosecute Ahmed for harassment, far from stopping her campaign of destruction – she escalated it.
Judge Gledhill QC said: ‘As a barrister, Ahmed was well aware of the gravity of what she had done and the potential consequences to herself. In order to avoid such consequences, her strategy then took an even more sinister turn.
‘She made another attempt to frame Mr Mohammed for a serious criminal offence. She reported that he had raped her on several occasions. Her complaint was detailed and convincing, even though it was completely false.
‘Her purpose was twofold – revenge and to divert the police attention away from herself and back onto Mr Mohammed. In the short term it worked. Mr Mohammed was again arrested and interviewed.
‘The effect on Mr Mohammed can hardly be over-stated. He saw his career, livelihood and family life disintegrating before his eyes, he even thought of taking his own life.’
Ahmed’s campaign of ‘evil’ did not stop with the rape allegations.
Instead, she set up fake email accounts in the victim’s name, using them to send herself threatening emails.
Similarly, she persuaded people in Birmingham to constantly phone her, supporting her fake allegation that Mohammed was harassing her.
Ahmed and Mohammed (above) met through LinkedIn around six years ago
The judge heard it was discovered that although Ahmed reported she had received threatening phone calls from Mohammed, in reality she had convinced her former boyfriend, Mustafa Hussain, to buy a phone in the victim’s name.
The court heard how Hussain, 34, who stood in court to be sentenced for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, was bombarded with texts and calls asking him to help Ahmed get back at a man who had wronged her.
Prosecuting, Iestyn Morgan said: ‘It was a complex and baroque conspiracy to convince the police that Mr Mohammed was pursuing her, threatening her, arranging others to threaten her, threatening to kill her and inflict really serious violence on her.’
As her harassment trial approached, Ahmed became increasingly desperate and hatched a plan to stage her own kidnapping and stabbing.
She thought the trial would be derailed if the police believed she had been attacked by Mohammed, the court heard.
Ahmed told Hussain that if he would not stab her, then she would have to stab herself. She said: ‘This is the only way out of this sh** – do it for love.’
Having planned the attack, she told Hussain to stab her three times and that she was to be attacked in the driver’s seat of her car from outside the door.
On July 12, 2015, police received a call to attend a seriously injured woman in a car parked on the side of a road. She had a ‘horrific’ wound to her thigh.
She was able to give a detailed account of what had happened, saying she had been stopped by another vehicle, ordered to get out, and stabbed in the leg by a man.
In the ambulance, she deliberately said the victim’s name, accusing him of kidnapping her and slashing her leg.
Judge Gledhill QC said: ‘Even while injured, Ahmed did not stop her campaign against Mr Mohammed.
‘She persuaded people to message her. Someone pretending to be an accomplice to the kidnap and stabbing, sent her letters, threatening her and warning her to withdraw her statements. There was even sent a letter from someone confessing to have stabbed her on the instructions of Iqbal.’
In her final attempt, Ahmed once again convinced Hussain to deliver a threatening letter to her house.
Hussain was duly arrested and, although he said he was acting on behalf of Mohammed, he was not convincing and officers discovered that there was a conspiracy to pervert the course of public justice.
Despite Hussain admitting conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, Ahmed painted herself as the victim which she maintained in court.
Mitigating, her defence counsel Balraj Bhatia said: ‘She is just a few days away from her 34th birthday… she is clearly a manipulative woman.
‘She has an inability to cope with rejection and feelings of betrayal but it is likely this behaviour is a coping mechanism as a result of her diagnosis of emotionally unstable personality disorder.
‘Her being jilted during the course of her relationship with Iqbal Mohammed, was a trigger. It is very much like the young child who cried wolf, she is now a woman who was driven to concoct false allegations of rape and has been found out.
‘She has made herself vulnerable to future abuse.’
The barrister explained how Ahmed had been a qualified lawyer before the conviction which will stop her from any career in law in the future.
He said: ‘She has lost her career, she approached her studies fastidiously and meticulously. They lived in a family home, her books for a significant period of time had simply invaded the dining room table, they stayed there while she studied pursuing a career in law.
‘She stayed up night after night and condensed a two year course into just a year. She qualified, a cause of great celebration and joy. Nothing is worse than when a gift is given and then cruelly taken away, she has to live with that.
‘A career she wanted to forge in law that will no longer be possible given this conviction. She has tried to come to terms with it by seeking solace in her religion, she prays five times a day. This has brought great shame on her and her well thought of Muslim family.’
Mohammed today described his ordeal at Oxford Crown Court, comparing his life throughout the distressing period as like the 1987 thriller Fatal Attraction.
He said: ‘I can’t put into words what it was like. I saw Fatal Attraction a couple of years ago but I couldn’t watch it because it was just like what happened to me, it was like the life that I lived.
‘There was no enjoyment or entertainment in it because it was scary to see this sort of thing in a film because I had lived it. It started off as harassment which was frustrating and then it became really dangerous and dark and really scary, frightening.’
He added that police later told him Ahmed most likely targeted him because he had been in a BBC documentary called The Barristers.
The victim also recalled the moment of his arrest following Ahmed’s initial harassment claims.
He said: ‘Being arrested at my chambers was awful, it was really awful. The police claimed they couldn’t find my address so a group of them turned up at my chambers with prior arrangement with the Head of my Chambers to arrest me.
‘The only small mercy that they showed was that they didn’t come in uniform and they didn’t put cuffs on me until I was in the car but they marched me out, it was such an incredibly bad experience.
‘Ahmed is a really disturbed person, she really holds a grudge, she is really obsessed with revenge and taking people down and destroying people. She is very committed and belligerent.
‘I hope this is the end of it. I have moved on hugely with my life, it is difficult to talk about it but I am hoping it is the end of it. I really hope for her that she does somehow get rehabilitated and that she gets the medical and psychological help she needs.’
Ahmed, of Wilkens Road, Oxford, was given a discretionary life sentence with a minimum term of four years, six months and 10 days.
Sentencing, Judge Gledhill said: ‘This case clearly involved very careful planning to destroy the personal and professional life of the victim. The lengths you went to, to exact revenge on Mr Mohammed were almost beyond belief.
‘Your actions, Ms Ahmed, were malicious, even evil. You persisted with them over a prolonged period of time and you recruited Hussain and others to assist you.
‘False allegations can have dreadful consequences on an innocent person who has committed no crime. Being wrongly accused of harassment is serious enough. But accusing him of rape is in quite another category.’
Hussain, of Slough, Berkshire, was given a two year prison sentence suspended for two years. He will have to undertake 150 hours unpaid work and pay £2,000 towards the prosecution costs.
