THE man who masterminded the brutal ‘honour killing’ of his daughter’s boyfriend in Rose Hill in 2004 must stay behind bars.

Chomir Ali was given a 20-year jail sentence in 2005 for bullying his teenage sons Mohammed Mjibar Rahman and Mamnoor Rahman into ambushing and murdering Oxford Brookes engineering student Arash Ghorbani-Zarin, after his daughter refused an arranged marriage with another man.

Arash, a former Cheney School pupil, was 19 when he was ambushed in his car, strangled and stabbed 46 times by the brothers of his pregnant girlfriend Manna Begum, then also 19.

Ali, of Asquith Road, Oxford, was arrested after witnesses saw him dumping a knife and bloodstained clothes at allotments in Rymers Lane, Cowley.

But last December he won the right to a Court of Appeal hearing after his lawyers argued the guilty verdict was unsafe.

To the relief of Arash’s family, three judges yesterday threw out the appeal and upheld the prison sentence.