Original subtitles

- (sombre music)

- There was real concern that some harm had come to her.

We need to find her for the family.

- They've absolutely no idea where she is.

That must have been absolutely terrifying.

- She had everything to live for. That was snatched from her

in the most cruel and horrific way.

JOANNA SCANLAN: With her killers refusing to reveal

the whereabouts of Rania's body,

police, prosecutors and forensic teams

have an almost impossible task to deliver justice.

- This case was probably one of the biggest regrets of my police career.

- Rania's family still wait for answers,

as to how their daughter fled war-torn Syria

for a safer life in Britain... then disappeared without a trace.

Every day, 20 people are reported missing

to Greater Manchester Police.

So, when a young woman calls to report her friend missing -

25-year-old mum-of-three, Rania Alayed,

it's not immediately flagged as high-risk.

- She'd arranged to meet a friend in Piccadilly Gardens, in Manchester,

and she'd arranged to meet her at seven o'clock.

Rania never turned up.

She tried ringing her, couldn't get any answer.

She waited a full three hours in Piccadilly Gardens,

waiting for her to turn up,

and inevitably trying loads and loads of times to get hold of Rania,

but couldn't get a hold of her at all.

JOANNA: Rania's friend then went to her home,

to see if she was still there.

- Went to the property. Couldn't see anything.

Couldn't get hold of Rania.

She then went again, the following day.

And on this occasion, she went to put a note through the door.

But she did notice that when she put the note through the door,

that the house was a mess.

Which wasn't like Rania.

Rania was very clean, she kept her place spotless.

So, she thought it was very odd, the fact that the house was a mess.

JOANNA: Despite friends' concerns,

it's not until Rania's uncle raises the alarm in early July,

a full three weeks after she was first reported missing,

that police finally open a missing person investigation.

- Rania's family were receiving some very odd text messages.

They were supposedly from Rania in Istanbul, and she was apologising.

She was saying sorry for the fact that she'd upped sticks

and was now in Turkey.

And these ... these were very out of character,

and they worried the family enormously.

JOANNA: Officers from Greater Manchester Police

start to retrace Rania's last movements on the 7th of June.

Trawling CCTV around her home in Manchester's Cheetham Hill.

- There is CCTV footage of Rania, with the three children,

leaving her home address, cos it was just off a shopping street.

She was going to drop the children off with her brother-in-law,

Muhanned, in Salford.

- (tense music)

JOANNA: A short time later,

it seems Rania leaves Muhanned's flat to continue her journey alone.

She then vanishes.

With suspicious texts supposedly being sent from Turkey,

Greater Manchester Police need to find out more

about Rania's background and her links overseas.

- Rania was a young woman, born in 1987.

She was a Palestinian,

and she lived in a refugee camp in Syria.

JOANNA: At just 15, Rania meets a blacksmith in the camp:

Ahmed Al-Khatib.

Although nine years her senior, they decide to marry.

- She was only 15 years old.

Effectively had a child marriage at the time.

- But it wasn't a marriage of convenience,

or an arranged marriage.

- Ahmed would say that Rania

was the love of his life, the first love.

The refugee camp life, as you would expect, was rough.

JOANNA: In 2004, in search of a better life,

Rania and her husband, Ahmed, make the 3,000-mile journey

to the UK and settle in the North East.

- There was always a bit of mystery about how they arrived.

So, we suspect that they may not have arrived legally.

And they arrived, and ended up in the North East of the country,

where they set up home.

- This promised land, with amazing new opportunities.

It would have been a pretty stressful time for Rania:

new culture, new language, got to find a job.

But she was pretty willing to adopt the western way of life.

- At first, life was good for Rania and Ahmed.

They'd settled in, and were looking forward to their future together.

JOANNA: But Rania's willingness to adapt to western life and culture

soon puts a strain on their marriage.

- Rania, at this point, has come from a community

where, essentially, decisions have been made for her,

where she hasn't had the ability to make choices

and decisions for herself,

which would have been in direct conflict with coming to the UK,

and this would have been very difficult

for those people around her.

Ahmed would not have allowed his wife to embrace those freedoms,

to have embraced those opportunities,

which put her in this space of real challenge.

Because, you know, she wanted to embrace the world around her,

but didn't necessarily have that ability

to do so within that marriage.

- When we started making inquiries,

she didn't have a massive circle of friends.

She had very, very few friends indeed, and only one in particular,

who she confided in to say that her marriage was struggling.

JOANNA: In 2009, Rania, Ahmed, and their two young children,

moved from Middlesbrough to Manchester,

where Ahmed's brother, Muhanned,

and the extended family live.

- Rania believed it was going to be a new start.

The marriage had started to become under pressure,

and she thought: "Well, if he's near his family,

then maybe things will calm down and things will be better."

So, I think the whole move to Manchester

was a very positive move to begin with in Rania's eyes.

IAN SHORE: Rania was trying to make the most of her life.

She was attending a college in Openshaw, Manchester,

where she was studying English,

and she saw that as a way to get out of the life that she once had.

She was a popular lady.

She'd made friends, and she was well-liked at college.

JOANNA: But behind closed doors, tensions resurface.

- By January 2013, the marriage was at breaking point.

Ahmed just couldn't accept the way that Rania was behaving in his eyes.

She was wearing makeup. She had friends.

She even had a social media site that Ahmed just couldn't accept.

She was becoming too westernised.

JOANNA: By January 2013, Rania and Ahmed decide to separate.

By now, they have three young children.

The youngest just two years old.

At the time of Rania's disappearance,

the children regularly saw their father, but lived with their mother.

Since they weren't seen leaving the flat with Rania on the 7th,

the police need to check the children are safe.

- If the kids are still going to school,

that relieves some of the pressure,

on the basis that you're now looking for just one missing person,

and not a missing person who's in company with three kids.

So, they go to the school, find out that everything is

reasonably as is,

apart from the fact that they are told that they haven't seen Rania.

And Rania was always the person

who was dropping the kids off at school and picking them up.

- (suspenseful music)

JOANNA: Teachers tell officers it's Ahmed

who's now doing the school run.

- We ended up going round to Ahmed's parents' address,

in Gorton in Manchester, where we actually found Ahmed.

- They go and speak to Ahmed, and say:

"Right, well, hang about a minute.

We're trying to look for your wife, she's gone missing."

And he goes: "Well, no, she hasn't gone missing at all."

IAN SHORE: He said, about 20 days previously,

the children had turned up with suitcases,

and that he believed that Rania had gone to Turkey at that time.

- Now, the officers that went were clearly not

totally convinced of this story

that she just turned up in a taxi, and then...and then went off,

because this clearly flew in the face of everything

that they had learned so far about the fact

that Rania was a caring mother.

- The kids just being left like that.

That's a big red flag for a missing person inquiry.

JOANNA: While at the property, police notice something else.

PETER RICKARDS: There was a smell of cannabis.

So, they searched Ahmed.

And at that stage, he was found to be in possession of cannabis

and was actually arrested.

- (engine idling)

- That then gave the police powers to search the house where he was.

- Officers found... what was very concerning

was female clothing in a bin at the...at the premises.

- (sombre music)

- Police investigating the disappearance

of 25-year-old mum-of-three, Rania Alayed in Manchester,

have arrested her estranged husband, Ahmed Al-Khatib,

for possession of a Class B drug.

But a search of his home has found something even more concerning.

A young woman's clothes, including jeans and a headscarf,

have been discovered in a bin.

IAN SHORE: Officers also found a wig,

and this seemed very odd.

- The clothing clearly didn't suit any of the occupants of the house,

and certainly wouldn't have fitted any of the occupants in the house.

In which case, their suspicions were roused even further.

JOANNA: The discarded clothing matches what Rania

was last seen wearing on CCTV, on the 7th of June,

the day she disappeared.

Detectives start questioning Ahmed about his wife's disappearance.

- Ahmed, the husband, had given us a story about not seeing Rania.

But when he was challenged about clothing, the wig,

he went: "No comment."

Major Incident team had become involved,

because there was real concern that some harm had come to Rania.

JOANNA: Background checks reveal Ahmed and Rania's marriage

has a long history of domestic violence.

- There was some cannabis misuse going on with Ahmed,

which was causing violent outbursts.

The marriage was beginning to spiral out of control.

There were occasions when he would examine her phone,

and there were items found on her phone that he wasn't happy with.

There was a lot of controlling behaviour going on at that time,

and coercive behaviour.

- Rania confided in a friend that she was very scared of Ahmed.

He'd threatened her so many times. He'd assaulted her.

He threatened to pour boiling water over her.

She was scared, there is no doubt about that.

She'd also confided that these acts were, in fact,

in front of their children, and that just couldn't be allowed to go on.

- She was living a living hell,

and he was making her life an absolute misery.

JOANNA: But one incident, in January 2013,

brings Rania to the brink.

PETER MARSH: He'd taken her phone off her, and beat her.

As a result, police were called.

- She managed to at that point separate from him.

- This is somebody who's then moving from a property,

where she's got the assistance of her husband

and the husband's parents, and all sorts of people around that,

that social network around there.

So, it was a massive decision for Rania to move out.

- Rania moved into a women's refuge

and, after being in the refuge,

started to rent with her children in Cheetham Hill

and all of this would have really enraged Ahmed.

PETER RICKARDS: She then clearly sought legal advice,

and managed to obtain a non-molestation order.

A non-molestation order is a really ginormous move.

It's a massive step.

Ironically, it's a step to protect her and the children from him.

And it's also very restricting on Ahmed,

on the basis that he couldn't have contact with her or the children

without a third party being present.

- This would have meant Rania having to go to court,

having to present evidence, and facing a court to lay bare

what she had been enduring for the last ten years.

And all of this would have massively contributed to the anger,

and the frustration and rage

that Ahmed was feeling after she has left.

- It's his surname. It's his family's name that's on that order.

Therefore, that would have brought a massive amount of shame to Ahmed.

JOANNA: But the non-molestation order doesn't stop Ahmed

from tracking Rania down...

through his eldest brother, Muhanned.

- The problem is, when she was at the hostel,

was that every time she declared where she was,

Muhanned was...was ringing her up and contacting her

and calling round the addresses where she was.

There was still some control being exercised by the family, over Rania.

As a result of which she then made

the incredibly brave decision to file for divorce.

- So, this again would have been a critical point

that would have increased the risk to Rania.

- According to Ahmed, she brought shame on the family

by the fact that she'd left him.

She brought shame on the family

by the fact that he'd been named in a non-molestation order.

Now, on top of that, she was now filing for divorce.

That is not something a lady in her position,

and from her background, would normally do.

JOANNA: Having found clothes she was last seen wearing

in a bin behind her estranged husband's house,

police now have serious concerns for Rania's welfare.

They decide to revisit the CCTV footage of her

on the day she disappeared, leaving her brother-in-law's flat, alone.

- Having watched the CCTV,

that person walks from the front of the building,

from the side of the building, down to the...

and into the back door, always hiding their face.

The gait was not Rania's gait in any way, shape or form.

The figure was not Rania's figure,

and it soon became apparent that that was not Rania.

But somebody purporting to be Rania.

That was Ahmed in that clothing.

- (ominous music)

JOANNA: Further inquiries reveal something even more sinister.

- Quite a few friends of hers suggested

that when they had spoken to Ahmed,

or that when they'd spoken to Rania,

Ahmed had threatened that if she ever left him, he would kill her.

- (police siren wails)

JOANNA: In Manchester, Ahmed Al-Khatib is now the prime suspect

behind the disappearance of his wife,

and mother of their three children, Rania Alayed.

Police find no proof to back up Ahmed's claims

that his estranged wife has gone to Turkey.

Even more suspiciously, Rania was last seen on CCTV,

going into Ahmed's brother Muhanned's flat with her children,

before leaving shortly afterwards, alone.

Except it wasn't Rania leaving.

It was Ahmed, dressed in his wife's clothes.

- There was then a decision taken

that everything wasn't adding up at all,

by any stretch of the imagination,

and therefore there was grounds to believe that

one: that Rania was dead.

And two: that Ahmed was responsible for her death.

And at that stage, he was then arrested on suspicion of murder.

And he then gave some ridiculous reply, like,

"Why, have you found her?" Which was a very telling reply.

So, we were right at the very beginning

of what then turned out to be a murder inquiry.

- (cell door clangs)

IAN SHORE: But what we didn't have was a body.

Normally in a murder investigation, there is a body,

but in this case we didn't.

So, we desperately needed to find Rania.

JOANNA: Without Rania's body, it would be an uphill struggle

to prove a murder charge against her estranged husband.

- At this point, police started appealing for people

to come forward regarding her disappearance.

- A press appeal was made

to see if anybody knew, or anybody had seen Rania,

to contact the police in relation to that.

JOANNA: The appeal draws the attention of Ahmed's family

and, in particular, his elder brother, Muhanned.

- His partner says: "There's been an appeal about Rania.

You need to find out what's going on."

Muhanned then turns round to his partner and said:

"Rania's not alive. Rania's dead."

His partner advised him to contact the police

and tell them straight away about what had happened.

And, in fact, Muhanned did contact the police that evening.

JOANNA: Police race to Muhanned's flat

in Arthur Millwood Court, Salford.

PETER RICKARDS: He is arrested in relation

to the disposal of Rania's body,

and he is brought into the police station,

where he is interviewed at length over the next three days.

- It was all hands on deck.

This opened up a whole new level of inquiry.

CCTV inquiries, more house-to-house inquiries, telephone inquiries.

This all went on, in an attempt to gain evidence.

JOANNA: Detectives hope Muhanned can provide them with crucial leads

on where Rania's body is, and how she died.

PETER RICKARDS: I was allocated the task of interviewing Muhanned.

He is quite content to extol the fact

that he is the leader of the family, he's the man that's in charge.

He portrayed himself as the man

who'd been given the task of sorting

his younger brother's relationship out with his wife,

which was failing badly.

Muhanned told me during interview

that he was the instigator behind Rania coming to the flat.

He wanted Rania and Ahmed to be back together again,

and wanted them to be back together as a family unit.

And so, therefore, he was trying, allegedly,

his utmost to try and facilitate that.

- (ominous music)

JOANNA: As Muhanned recounts the events of that day,

the team piece together the family's movements

from CCTV outside his home.

- At 7:31 that evening,

CCTV has captured Rania arriving with the children,

as had been arranged, pre-arranged with Muhanned Al-Khatib.

- When Rania got to the flat, she was going to drop the children off.

She had a pre-arranged meeting

for after the children had been dropped off.

Her husband, who had been violent to her in the past,

was waiting at the flat.

- She arrives at the flat, you know,

not expecting to see Ahmed there at all, but he's there.

So, we can only imagine what must have been going through

her head at that time.

You know, the ... the fear, the apprehension.

She must have been absolutely petrified.

- If she had known he was at the flat,

she would never have gone to the flat.

Muhanned tells us Rania and Ahmed went into the bedroom.

What he'd been told was that Ahmed had been arguing with Rania.

He'd pushed her, and she had fallen

and hit her head on the side of the bed.

And that she had died then.

During the interview, Muhanned puts the blame fairly and squarely,

one hundred per cent, for the death of Rania on Ahmed.

IAN SHORE: What he was saying was actually fitting

with what we were seeing on the CCTV.

At 8:19pm, Muhanned and the three children

were seen leaving Arthur Millwood Court.

- Muhanned tells us,

he gets into his motor home with the three children.

He goes off towards Ahmed's address.

- At 8:33 that evening, a figure outside Arthur Millwood Court

was dressed in Rania's clothes.

This was, in fact, Ahmed trying to deceive the CCTV cameras

that Rania was still alive.

- Muhanned told us that Ahmed had then walked round the flat,

back into the door, to remove Rania from the flat.

Ahmed had done so, using a red suitcase...

..he had found in the flat itself,

and wheeled it out of the flat and into his car.

- The CCTV showed a Peugeot vehicle leaving Arthur Millwood Court.

This was driven by Ahmed, and we believe the body of Rania

was in the boot of that car, inside a suitcase.

- During interview, Muhanned said that Ahmed turned up.

They then decided that they needed to dispose of Rania.

So, Ahmed, Muhanned, and the other brother, Hussain,

who was at the address at the time,

all three of them then moved the suitcase

from the rear of the Peugeot car,

and put that suitcase into the rear of the camper van.

- The plan was to drive her up, in the camper van,

to Redcar in the North East,

where they would dispose of her body.

JOANNA: By 3am next morning,

Muhanned says the brothers had made it as far as Yorkshire.

- Unfortunately, as they started to approach the North East,

the camper van started making strange noises.

- It had gearbox and clutch issues.

So, they pulled into a layby...

..and they decided at that point to bury Rania.

PETER RICKARDS: Muhanned says that on this random layby,

they took Rania out of the suitcase.

- A decision was made that Ahmed would bury Rania, there and then,

at the side of the road.

- They then returned back towards Manchester,

but unfortunately the camper van broke down

and was attended to by a breakdown service,

where the breakdown man took the camper van back to Manchester.

JOANNA: Detectives are taken aback at what Muhanned suggests next.

- Muhanned offered to go with officers on the journey,

up to the North East via the A19,

and try and identify the layby

where Ahmed had buried Rania.

- Now, in some ways, that worked in our favour, because by this stage

Ahmed's interview had reverted back to "no comment".

So, Muhanned was going to be the lynchpin.

- It was massive. To have someone show us

where the body was buried was...was incredible.

We now had to find out where Rania was.

JOANNA: Detectives investigating the disappearance

of mum-of-three Rania Alayed

have had a breakthrough in the search for her body.

Rania's brother-in-law, Muhanned Al-Khatib,

has offered to take officers to where he claims

he and Rania's husband, Ahmed, buried her.

We went up in a van.

We had Muhanned, who was clearly handcuffed.

We had his solicitor.

We had a scenes of crime officer.

JOANNA: The team retraces the route

of the night-time journey the brothers took,

driving Rania's body from Manchester to North Yorkshire,

where their camper van had then broken down.

- We followed the route, as directed by Muhanned.

We eventually got to the A19.

It became abundantly clear, very quickly,

that he didn't really have an idea

as to which layby it was.

- He thought it may have been on a bend.

There may have been a bridge close to it,

and there were trees on the banking.

But as we would later find out,

this fitted numerous locations along that route.

- I couldn't decide whether we were on a wild-goose chase.

I didn't know whether he was trying to be helpful

or trying to show that he was being helpful,

which are two different things.

- But essentially, Muhanned failed miserably

to point out where the camper van had stopped

and where Rania was buried.

- (sombre music)

JOANNA: By analysing where the camper van

had triggered automatic number plate recognition cameras,

police draw up a search area.

It's a massive, 18-mile stretch of A-roads to cover.

- There'd been two instances of aerial reconnaissance

by police helicopters and planes.

They'd had cadaver dogs,

which are dogs that are specifically trained

to identify the scent of a decomposing body.

We were searching for a needle in a haystack.

JOANNA: A specialist search team is set up.

They start to track the positions of the brothers' mobile phones

at the estimated time of Rania's burial.

- And we narrowed the search down to what we believed would be

two laybys in the Thirsk area of North Yorkshire,

over a few hundred yards.

And this was... This was great news for the investigation team.

JOANNA: Eventually, the search is narrowed down even further,

to just one layby.

- Royal engineers assist us to identify...

..any disturbance in the ground.

- We employed a forensic archaeologist,

and also a botanist,

in an attempt to identify the burial site.

- And we haven't come with anything.

JOANNA: Even though they haven't found Rania's body,

police need to prove her body was transported in the van.

The police search the Manchester garage

where the brothers' broken-down camper van was taken,

and they make a case-changing discovery.

- There was some spare land at the side,

and we actually found parts, and remnants,

or what appeared to be a red suitcase.

That was recovered and examined.

Rania's DNA was found on that suitcase.

Which suggested to us that that was the suitcase

that Rania had been in.

There was a pair of scissors found in the camper van,

which had traces of that suitcase on as well.

So, we could put the suitcase, the camper van,

and the DNA from Rania together.

JOANNA: On the 8th of July, 2013,

31 days after her disappearance,

Ahmed Al-Khatib is charged with Rania's murder,

together with his brother, Muhanned.

Muhanned and Hussain are also charged

with perverting the course of justice.

In the months that follow, the search for Rania's body continues.

Her family help police with an appeal to the public.

REPORTER: Rania Alayed's uncle today visited the place

where police had searched, in vain, to find the body of his niece.

- I was able to explain to him and, you know,

reassure him that things had been done.

You could tell he was emotional.

Somebody may have returned afterwards and moved her.

If anybody might have seen something suspicious,

that was out of the ordinary, I'd actually like to hear from them

from this point onwards, really.

Unfortunately, nothing came from that...that appeal.

On the 20th of March,

we received notification from Ahmed Al-Khatib's legal team

that he wanted to assist us, which was a bolt out of the blue.

JOANNA: By this stage, Ahmed Al-Khatib is on remand in prison,

awaiting trial.

- This was the person that had buried the body

wanted to tell us where she was, and this was fantastic.

- But I had my reservations,

and it was his motives.

Why was he doing it?

JOANNA: Weeks later, under tight security,

Ahmed's escorted out of prison to the A19.

IAN SHORE: I was handcuffed to Ahmed,

in the back of an unliveried police vehicle,

until we got to our favourite layby.

And as we approached it, he said, "I think it's this one."

So, again this was confirmation for us

that we'd been looking in the right area.

He took us from the vehicle, into the layby,

into a ditch, under some trees,

and I vividly remember him pawing the ground with his foot, saying:

"I think she's here."

- (sombre music)

- Then, to all intents and purposes, this was the end of our search.

- He said he'd buried Rania face down,

and her legs were bent behind her.

He said that her head and face were covered in clingfilm...

..and he put the soil back on,

and then brushed the leaves and debris over.

JOANNA: Days later, police start digging

in the location Ahmed has identified.

- (birds chirruping)

IAN SHORE: A very small area,

because this is where Ahmed had said she was.

Unfortunately, she wasn't.

JOANNA: The trial against The Al-Khatib brothers

begins at Manchester Crown Court.

Hussain pleads not guilty to perverting the course of justice.

Muhanned and Ahmed plead not guilty to the murder of Rania Alayed,

with part of Ahmed's defence

being on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

SHAUNNA BURNS: Part of Ahmed's defence, he said

that Rania was actually possessed with an evil spirit called a djinn.

And then it was attacking him, so him killing her was self-defence.

NATASHA RATTU: So, what we see in the trial

are some extraordinary behaviours of Ahmed.

We see him rocking backwards and forwards.

We see a moment in the trial,

where he seizes the interpreter by his neck.

He goes to grab his brother.

And essentially, what Ahmed is trying to do

was put on this show to corroborate this account that he, you know,

had diminishing mental health.

- One of Ahmed's biggest problems with the djinn

was when his brothers were asked about

how long he'd been plagued by this djinn,

both of them showed no knowledge at all.

NATASHA RATTU: His defence started to crumble.

JOANNA: The prosecution outlines

Ahmed's real motive for murdering his wife.

- She had left him, she was behaving westernised.

She'd dared to ask for a divorce.

All of this exceptionally dishonourable behaviour,

and his punishment of her was to murder her.

What we can say quite clearly is that this was an honour killing.

- Ahmed came up with this elaborate plan

to make it look like Rania was still alive.

So he was logging into her social media accounts,

messaging her friends and her family.

- He's been very calculating.

Ahmed's been playing a game, right the way through.

JOANNA: The jury seems to agree.

After a brief deliberation,

Ahmed Al-Khatib is found guilty of Rania Alayed's murder.

He's jailed or life, with a minimum of 20 years.

- Ahmed showed absolutely no remorse, no nothing.

And it was in the judge's remarks

that the contempt that he had shown Rania when she was alive

was still evident today in the courtroom.

JOANNA: Ahmed's brother, Muhanned, is found not guilty of murder.

Having admitted perverting the course of justice,

he is sentenced to three years.

Hussain is found guilty of the same offence,

and is jailed for four years.

In the years since Rania's murder,

there have been several more searches

around the Yorkshire layby for her body,

but to no avail.

Police have tried numerous times, to get Ahmed to give up his secret:

where he buried his wife's body.

- This case was one of the biggest regrets of my police career.

We so wanted to get the right conclusion,

but unfortunately we didn't.

- One of the questions that was asked for him is:

"What are you going to do when your kids get older,

and they can't go and speak to their mum, pay their respects?"

He said...

"My son will understand, when he comes of age."

And that just smacked to me of this misogynistic...

..selfish arrogance.

NATASHA RATTU: She had everything to live for.

That was snatched from her in the most cruel and horrific way.

- (sombre music)

Subtitles by Sky Access Services