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EXCLUSIVE: Secret divorce imam 'will go to prison'
A FORMER Armley jail imam faces jail for forging his severely disabled wife's signature to divorce her behind her back.
Khalil Kazi jetted to Morocco a month after the illegal 2005 divorce to secretly marry a second bride under Islamic law.
His paraplegic wife Meimuna believed she was still wed and knew nothing of her husband's second bride. Prosecutors said Kazi, of Batley Carr, hatched the plot to divorce his wife, who uses a wheelchair, without her knowledge because he wanted to keep access to her 1m compensation from a hospital negligence claim.
A Leeds Crown Court jury of eight men and four women convicted Kazi of perjury and perverting the course of justice after a trial. Judge Scott Wolstenholme freed Kazi on bail until he is sentenced on Friday.
But Judge Wolstenholme warned him: "It's inevitable that for offences of this gravity, which strike at the root of the judicial system, a prison sentence is inevitable. How long that will be I don't know until I have heard from your counsel."
Kazi, 39, falsified divorce papers and perjured himself by falsely swearing a witness statement for a grant of divorce to end the 1995 arranged marriage.
His plot was foiled when Mrs Kazi visited Dewsbury County Court in March 2006 to apply for a decree of judicial separation.
She was shocked to be told she was already divorced and felt guilty that she had, unbeknown to her, been living in adultery.
Kazi claimed his wife falsely accused him of secretly divorcing her in a vindictive bid to "destroy his life" after he won a custody battle for their son.
Kazi, who was a part-time imam at Armley jail from 1995 to 2007 and imam at a Batley mosque, now works as a community faith development officer for the Kirklees faith forum.
The couple had a son in 1996, but in 1998 Meimuna started suffering back pain which was misdiagnosed as minor at Dewsbury and District Hospital.
But the problem, which was traced back to the birth of her son, turned out to be an epidural abscess which left her paraplegic and in a wheelchair. She sued the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust for negligence and settled with a 1.1m payment.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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