PEOPLE have told Raheem Ghorbani-Zarin, the father of a man stabbed 46 times in a so-called honour killing, that time would be a healer.

“That is total rubbish... the devastation is unreal and total,” the 55-year-old told the Oxford Mail yesterday as one of the men convicted of killing his son Arash tries to launch a bid for freedom.

Oxford Brookes engineering student Arash was 19 when he was ambushed in his car, strangled and stabbed by the brothers of his pregnant girlfriend Manna Begum.

The former Cheney School pupil was found dead in his car in Spencer Crescent, Rose Hill, on November 20, 2004.

A year later, Oxford Crown Court convicted Chomir Ali, a Bangladeshi Muslim, of bullying his teenage sons Mohammed Mjibar Rahman and Mamnoor Rahman into murdering their sister’s lover because she had “dishonoured the family” by refusing an arranged marriage.

All three were convicted of murder, and Ali was told he would spend at least 20 years of his life sentence behind bars Ali, 50, is today going to the Court of Appeal seeking to overturn his conviction.

Some may view that it has once again brought up the pain of the murder for Arash’s family. The truth is, however, it has never gone away.

Mr Ghorbani-Zarin said: “Before this happened, we had a nice house, I had nearly paid off the mortgage, and everything was good. We were looking forward in life.

“People say time is a healer and we should feel better now, but that is total rubbish. It still feels like it happened yesterday, and it has left us the living dead.”

Mr Ghorbani-Zarin now suffers heart palpitations and depression, and is facing financial ruin after investments to secure his family’s future collapsed.

He said: “Physically and mentally, it is so bad that I have lost my memory.

“We have all thought about suicide, and even now I sometimes feel like that.

“I still wake up twice a night screaming and shouting, seeing my boy getting stabbed.

“Even when I am driving, I suddenly imagine they are stabbing Arash and I scream so loud that I shake myself.”

Arash’s sister, Sara, 19, said: “There are no words to really describe Arash. He had the type of personality that when someone met him, they immediately fell in love with him.

“I think of him as our sunshine. Without him we only have darkness and desolation.”

Mr Ghorbani-Zarin said the family would have to relive Arash’s murder during Ali’s appeal.

He said: “Taxpayers have had to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds for the lawyers of these murderers.

“But can anybody in the courts, Parliament, or the county tell me where my son’s and my family’s human rights are?

“We have been left with nothing, when they will be out of prison in years to come.”