Son-in-law in court over murder

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A 40-year-old man has appeared in court charged with the murder of his mother-in-law, whose body was found after a bungalow fire in East Sussex.

Mohammed Soboh, of New England Road, Brighton, was charged by police on Friday evening and appeared before Brighton magistrates on Saturday.

He was remanded in custody to appear at Lewes Crown Court on 29 May.

The body of Pauline Knowles-Samarraie, 72, was found after a blaze in Grand Crescent on 22 April.

Post-mortem tests showed the elderly woman, originally from Halifax in West Yorkshire, died of head injuries.

Family killed

Mrs Knowles-Samarraie had survived Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq but her husband and son were executed by him in the 1980s.

She met her Iraqi husband, Munem, in her native Halifax, where he was studying A-levels.

Her husband, who had become an oil minister, was killed in 1986 on Saddam's orders at Abu Ghraib prison.

Years after fleeing Iraq with her daughter, Mrs Knowles-Samarraie discovered that her son, Mazin, had been hanged in 1988.