"Don't let my husband come near me. He pushed me."
These were Fawziyah Javed 's last words as she lay seriously injured on a rocky Scottish hillside, 15 meters below the cliff top where she had been walking with her husband, Kashif Anwar.
The 31-year-old British lawyer was 17 weeks pregnant and had just told her husband, to whom she had been married for less than nine months, that she wanted a divorce. She ended up succumbing to her injuries that night in September 2021, reports HuffPost.
At the top of the cliff, a Scottish tourist spot known as Arthur's Seat, Anwar told passers-by that he and his wife had tripped, but that he had managed to balance himself - while Javed fell down the slope.
But the evidence told a different story, told by the various witnesses who testified when Anwar was tried for his wife's murder.
In the hearings, no voice was louder than that of the woman she had killed. Her last words, and the evidence she had collected over months documenting her husband's abuse, made Javed the star witness in her own murder trial.
Set in Edinburgh in March 2023, the trial is the central theme of "The Push: Murder on a Cliff", a fascinating new courtroom documentary currently showing on Channel 4 in the UK.
The small family was extremely close, and Fawziyah and her mother had a special bond. "She was more than a daughter," says Yasmin in the documentary. "She was my best friend."
Yasmin Javed says that her son-in-law seemed "very charismatic, polite and well-mannered" - a façade he instantly lost when he got angry. "He was like the character in Jekyll and Hyde, who used coercive control and violence in an attempt to force women into submission."
Javed's last words alone might not have been enough to convict her husband. However, the lawyer was decisive in convicting her husband in other ways.
When Anwar's abuse escalated from threats and intimidation to physical attacks, Javed contacted the police twice. He didn't want to press charges, he said at the time, but he wanted it on record that he had reported the abuse.Javed, a successful lawyer, was the only child of Mohammed and Yasmin Javed, second-generation British Pakistanis.
The police filmed a statement in which Javed told officers that, about three months after the wedding, Anwar had put a pillow over her face and punched her several times. In another incident, he knocked her unconscious, the lawyer said at the time.
The jurors saw the video of these two police statements, the second of which took place just six days before Javed's death. Secret recordings Javed had made of conversations with her husband were also played in court.
Anwar refused to testify in his own defense, so apart from the recording of the 911 call he made reporting the crash, his threats to his wife were the only words the jury heard from him.
The power dynamics of the couple's relationship changed almost instantly after the wedding, when Javed went to live with Anwar and his parents.
The Anwars expected the new bride to be submissive and to prioritize her relationship with them over her own parents - a tradition that Javed and his relatives opposed.
The Javed did not believe that women should be subordinate to men. Both Fawziyah and Yasmin were members of the Muslim Women's Network, which works to promote social justice and equality for Muslim women and girls.
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After the wedding, Javed struggled to maintain his independence. He worked full-time and volunteered for various charitable causes, and had his own bank account - from which, according to prosecutors, the husband had withdrawn 12,000 pounds, around 14,000 euros.
A few weeks before his death, Javed had spent a few days at his parents' house, which infuriated Anwar. His misogyny and controlling behavior are evident in a phone call she recorded and which was played in court.
"Who do you think you are? You're not a man... so come home tomorrow, as you've been told. Don't be a British woman". In other words, an independent woman who enjoys autonomy outside her marriage.
"You're a disease in everyone's life," says Anwar in another call, when Javed was with her family, whom he had also threatened before. "The sooner you die, the sooner you're out of my life. It will be better."
Yasmin Javed says that her daughter was planning to leave her husband, and that it was surprising that she agreed to a sunset walk, since she was afraid of heights and tired easily due to her pregnancy.
The day before the hike, some guests at the hotel where the couple were staying were so alarmed to hear Anwar repeatedly shouting at Javed that they notified the authorities.
The police officer who first arrived at the scene of his death testified that he found Javed "writhing in pain", but still able to speak. She reiterated what she had told a passer-by, adding that her husband had pushed her because she had told him she "wanted to end" the marriage.
Javed was terrified, the officer said. "Am I going to die? Will my baby die?". She lost consciousness and attempts at resuscitation were unsuccessful. She died at 10:18 pm.
In April 2023, Kashif Anwar was found guilty of Fawziyah Javed's murder and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.
Fawziyah Javed, a third-generation British-Pakistani lawyer, died in September 2021.
