A BURNLEY council chief has called for Home Secretary Jack Straw to review the case of an Asian woman who poisoned her husband with arsenic.

Deputy council leader Rafique Malik is the first leading male Muslim figure to question the guilty verdict in the case involving Bradford woman Zoora Shah jailed for life for the murder of her husband five years ago.

Shah, 46, poisoned her drug dealer husband Mohammed Azam and a jury unanimously found her guilty.

But today the foreman of the jury -- who does not wish to be named -- expressed doubts over the verdict and said it may have been different if details about the abuse and injury she received from her husband had come out at the trial.

And Coun Malik, secretary of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, revealed he was part of the growing campaign to win the woman's release.

Coun Malik, former director of Blackburn Racial Equality Council and a leading light in national Asian organisations for over 30 years said: "It is absolutely abnormal for an Asian woman to murder a man," he said.

"She would only do it when she had really been pressed too hard and too far."

He added: "I do not think that any Asian woman who is sane will go to that extent without some reasons behind it."

Shah appealed against sentence in April this year but the appeal was dismissed by Lord Justice Kennedy who described her as "a most unsatisfactory witness" and said her evidence "was not capable of belief".

She remains in the maximum security wing at Durham prison.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.