Yazan Khatib detailed the 12-year-long devastating journey he took after his father murdered his mother in a Salford flat, and revealed exactly what he asked the man years later
A man who visited his dad in prison nearly a decade after he murdered his mum has revealed the first thing two men spoke about when visiting him in prison.
Yazan Khatib visited his estranged dad Ahmed Al-Khatib after he turned 18, more a decade after he had murdered his wife Rania Alayed, Yazan’s mother. Rania, a “loving, friendly and sociable” mum, had fled Syria for a better life in the UK, but became the victim of an honour killing at Al-Katib’s hands.
Her body was dumped following the murder at a flat in Salford in June 2013, and Yazan and his siblings were deprived of a childhood with a loving mother as police carried out multiple searches in a bid to find her remains. Now, as police reveal they have made a breakthrough in her case, the Yazan, now 21, has revealed what he told his dad as he serves a minimum 20-year sentence behind bars.
Speaking to the Manchester Evening News, Yazan said he and his siblings were placed in care after their mum was killed and their dad imprisoned, and he waited a decade to be able to speak to him. When the two did meet, he said Al-Khatib pinpointed the location where his mother was hidden, circling an area on a map beside the A19 in Thirsk, North Yorkshire.
He said his dad had “assured me that he’d point out where my mum had been buried”, but searches following the initial tipoff yielded nothing. It wasn’t until November last year that his dad did eventually point out where Rania was buried, and Greater Manchester Police revealed investigators were able to finally locate her remains.
“I’d like to say that we have now all been given a lot of closure,” Yazan said from his east Manchester home. “We weren’t necessarily expecting [police to find her] this time, as there had been searches in the past which had been unsuccessful,” he said. After receiving the call from GMP, Yazan said his family feel “at ease” and not “angered at the situation”.
“But they started searching on Monday and then yesterday I got the call to say they had found the remains. We feel at ease now. I would say calm, happy and relieved. We come from a Muslim family and we believe the destiny was written regardless – and that what was going to happen was always going to happen, which is why we aren’t angered at the situation.
“I think it’s just relief that something has actually come up now. Hopefully, once everything is done and recovered, we can lay some flowers down, instead of just knowing she is ‘somewhere’ 200km away. Up until when my dad assured me that he’d point out where my mum had been buried, it didn’t seem real. It always felt like something that had just happened, and like it was a story that was just ingrained in my life.
He said: “We feel at ease now. I would say calm, happy and relieved. We come from a Muslim family and we believe the destiny was written regardless – and that what was going to happen was always going to happen, which is why we aren’t angered at the situation.”
And with Rania’s remains recovered, Yazan said his family hoped to finally put a lid on the experience, adding: “We hope putting a full stop to this will finally give us some peace. There shouldn’t be anything further to disclose. It will be peace-giving for us all.”
Yazan is hopeful for the future, but carries an incredible weight, knowing exactly how his mother died. He added: “What he did was something a child should never have to go through. However, he was a good father to me, as my mother was a good mother to me.
“I did want to genuinely understand why it happened. I didn’t want to block him out of my life and wanted to hear from him first-hand. The last thing I wanted to do was lose the closest person in my life and then slowly have others wither away, too.
“As much as I was upset at the time, he told me we could discuss everything from top to bottom. I know its peculiar for people who aren’t in my situation to understand, but it’s not something I could ever explain.
“He’s always been supportive of me. He isn’t someone who committed the act and never wants to sustain a relationship with his children. He wanted to be as close as he can to me. I took the opportunity to ask him and try and see his point of view.”