Cousin of Canning Town freezer victim ‘scarred’ by police footage of body
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The cousin of a murder victim said she was left “scarred” after viewing police footage of her relative’s body.
She described having a “breakdown” while seeing video footage which identified Mihrican “Jan” Mustafa’s body because of the distinctive clothes she was wearing at the time.
Mother-of-three Ms Mustafa, 38, is believed to have been strangled to death by double murderer and convicted paedophile Zahid Younis, 36 days after she went missing in May 2018.
Younis was found guilty at Southwark Crown Court on Thursday of murdering Ms Mustafa, along with Hungarian national Henriett Szucs, 34, and was jailed for life with a minimum term of 38 years.
He admitted keeping their bodies inside a small, padlocked, chest freezer at his flat in Vandome Close, Canning Town, east London.
Speaking on Friday, Ms Mustafa’s cousin, Ayse Hussein, told 5 News: “The images have scarred me.
“The only thing you could see when they opened the freezer was her foot and her tracksuit bottoms.
“But because we knew what she was wearing, and when they described it, I saw she was wearing a Superman sock.
“As soon as I saw her sock I was screaming in the court. I had a breakdown in the court.”
Ms Hussein had opted to see the video after an advisory warning from the Metropolitan Police.
Mel Mustafa said she was “disgusted” with the Metropolitan Police for taking a year to find her sister’s body, claiming she had told them to check CCTV from the area following her disappearance.
She said: “We had to be our own detective at the time. There were times we were acting like policewomen.
“We’d have a notebook in our hands and we’d knock on people’s doors.”
Speaking outside court on Thursday, she told the murderer to “rot in hell”, while Ms Hussein said: “Finally, you’re away from women and finally women are safe.”
Younis married a 14-year-old girl in an Islamic ceremony at a mosque in Walthamstow, east London, in 2004.
He was jailed for two and a half years for assaulting the teenager and unlawful sexual activity with a child and was put on the sex offenders’ register.
Younis was later sentenced to four years and 11 months imprisonment for two counts of wounding and one of assault occasioning actual bodily harm following an abusive relationship with a 17-year-old girl.
