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Top judges have overturned the life sentence handed down to an ‘evil’ barrister who pursued a Fatal Attraction-style campaign to get back at a former lover.
Shamed lawyer Anisah Ahmed, 34, was given the hefty sentence in April after she admitted making up lies against Iqbal Mohammed – including roping in ex-boyfriend Mustafa Hussain as she invented claims that the married barrister had raped, stabbed and tried to kidnap her.
The victim compared his experience to Hollywood blockbuster Fatal Attraction, in which a jilted lover takes increasingly extreme steps to enact revenge on her married victim.
Sentencing her to life and ordering she serve at least four-and-a-half years behind bars, Judge Michael Gledhill QC described Ahmed’s actions as ‘malicious, even evil’. He recognised life sentences were a last resort but concluded there was a high risk she would commit serious offences and that risk could not be managed with a stringent restraining order.
It was the first time that a life sentence had been imposed for perverting the course of justice charges.
On Thursday, a panel of three Court of Appeal judges overturned the life sentence – instead imposing a 10 year prison sentence and a lifelong restraining order.
READ MORE: Oxford lawyer given life sentence after falsely claiming she was raped
Lord Justice Edis urged Ahmed, who appeared over video link from HMP Eastwood Park and was so overcome with emotion she rose from her seat and walked out of shot when the judgement was pronounced, to continue her ‘good work’ in prison and seek help with her mental health upon her release.
“The stakes are very high for you,” he said.
“They are not as high as they were because you are no longer subject to a life sentence but they are high.
“If you commit further offences or breach any of those orders you will go to prison for a long time. Whether that happens or not is up to you.”
READ MORE: Scorned lawyer’s victim compares ordeal to Fatal Attraction
Anisah Ahmed
Balraj Bhatia QC, for Ahmed, earlier told the court that the judge had been wrong to impose a life sentence in April.
He said the judge’s notional starting point of 12 years’ imprisonment before factoring in her guilty pleas was ‘manifestly excessive’ and did not take into account her medical conditions.
The barrister complained there was an ‘inexplicable’ difference between the life sentence given to Ahmed and the suspended sentence handed to stooge Hussain.
In a written judgement, Mr Justice Knowles acknowledged the ‘difficult task’ faced by Judge Gledhill in the ‘unusual case’. But the court concluded that there had not been enough information for him to conclude that Ahmed was a ‘serious danger’ to the public forever.
Ahmed’s attempts to falsify evidence to frame Mr Mohammed were called ‘calculated, sophisticated, sustained and repeated’.
“It is quite clear that the Appellant was intent on destroying her victim’s life, and she came close to doing so,” Mr Justice Knowles said.
But he added that, although the offending justified a ‘long sentence’, she had not committed a serious violent or sexual offence that – according to a landmark 1997 appeal case – might attract a life sentence.
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