The younger sister of Shafilea Ahmed sobbed as she told a jury that she could not visit her grave without first speaking out about what she saw.
Alesha Ahmed, 23, was concluding her evidence at Chester Crown Court, where her parents, Iftikhar, 52, and Farzana, 49, deny murdering their daughter, 17, in 2003.
Miss Ahmed said: “I have to speak for my sister. I said to myself I am not going to go back to her grave without saying something.”
Shafilea went missing in September 2003 and her body was found in Sedgwick, Cumbria, five months later.
It was only when Alesha was questioned by police about her link to a robbery at her parents’ home that she told them that she had seen them kill her sister, allegedly because of her Western lifestyle.
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She has described seeing her parents stuff a plastic carrier bag in her sister’s mouth and then smother her airways before disposing of the body.
The prosecution says that Mr and Mrs Ahmed killed her because she yearned for a westernised lifestyle, had turned her back on traditional culture and refused an arranged marriage.
Miss Ahmed told the jury that she had not only spoken of the murder to school friends at the time, she had also told two close friends from university. She had told a boyfriend and another student.
She said she told her boyfriend how a bag was stuffed into her sister’s mouth and a hand held over her airways as she was kicking out.
Andrew Edis, QC, for the prosecution, asked: “You said what happened. Did you tell them who had done it?” “Yes,” she replied from the screened-off witness box. “I told them it was my parents.”
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Mr Edis also asked her whether, when she had threatened to retract her statement, that had been because it was untrue.
“Never,” she replied. “It was just because I could not cope with the pressure of being a witness.”
Mr Edis also asked her about her recollections of the “worst” incident involving her sister and her parents before her alleged murder. When Shafilea was 16 years old she had seen her father hitting her in the head with his fists and her mother beating her in a chaotic fashion.
She described seeing her father pull a long bladed kitchen knife from the drawer. They were both involved in using it, she said, “pressing it against her neck”.
Earlier, under cross-examination, Mukhtar Hussain, QC, counsel for Mrs Ahmed, put it to her that she had sought her mother’s help confessing she had done “something dodgy”.
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Mr Hussain suggested to Miss Ahmed that she told her mother some boys at university had given her a gun for safekeeping. She had put it in her locker but someone had taken it and now she was being asked for the gun back or she would have to pay them money.
Miss Ahmed described the suggestion as a “ridiculous story that has been made up”.
Mr Hussain suggested to her that she told police officers a false story about her parents as a way out of a substantial prison sentence for her role in the robbery. He told her: “You played the only card you had, the get-out-of-jail card?” Miss Ahmed replied that there was “no such thing”.
Mr Hussain told her that she had been prepared to put her family in mortal danger by organising the robbery. Isn’t that what she is doing now, trying to save her skin?” he asked.
She replied: “It is not about playing a card. It is about telling the truth of what happened.” The trial continues.