THE climax of an important case at a large crown court was Shafilea Ahmed’s dream.

A bright, intelligent, normal 17-year-old A-level student, she dreamed and talked of becoming a lawyer and fighting for justice.

But that chance was cruelly taken away from her – by the people she should have been able to trust the most.

Almost nine years on from the Great Sankey High School student’s disappearance and subsequent murder and her killers were finally convicted on Friday.

Those fighting for justice had been vindicated and justice had finally been done in Shafilea’s name. Her murder was a stain on Warrington and brought shame on the town, the convictions have been a long time coming.

That those people responsible – well known taxi driver Iftikhar and domineering housewife Farzana – could have been her own parents, has long shocked Warrington.

The details revealed in court though for the past 11 weeks have been even more startling.

Shafilea was popular in school, she had friends, enjoyed going out and was a bright student.

But she was the subject of horrendous abuse over a number of years. Her parents, both now serving life sentences in prison, would beat her, bully her and punish her for going out.

They tried to impose a strict, Pakistani upbringing on a young, western girl who wanted something different from her life.

When they took her to Pakistan for an arranged marriage, she drank bleach in a final, frightened bid to escape.

When yet another fight erupted at the family home, Farzana, aged 49, told husband Iftikhar, aged 52, to ‘finish it’.

And they did in an evil attack, smothering her to death with a plastic bag while their other four children were in the house before dumping her body in a river in the middle of the night.

As a girl in the Ahmed household there were three ways out of what their parents put them through.

Submit as Mevish did, run away as Alesha finally did, or be killed as Shafilea horrifically was.

Now the two people responsible have started what should be a lifetime in prison. For almost a decade they have lied.

Today, Shafilea would have been 26, perhaps married and ready to step into another courtroom battle. In Chester Crown Court on Friday, she won what would be her only courtoom date.