Brother of woman found dead on golf course months after she went missing makes plea for information

The brother of a woman found dead on a golf course months after she went missing has made an emotional appeal for information five years on from her disappearance.

Sadat Ahmed returned to Edinburgh on Friday for the first time since August 2016 to make the renewed appeal for information about the death of his sister. 

Saima Ahmed was reported missing on Sunday August 30, 2015, and is believed to have taken a train from London to Edinburgh.  

Sadat Ahmed, pictured, returned to Edinburgh on Friday for the first time since August 2016 to make the renewed appeal for information about the death of his sister Saima

Her body was not found until January 9, 2016 in the grounds of Gogarburn Golf Course, 400 miles from her home in Wembley, north London.

Unconfirmed sightings of people matching her description at the time were made at Portobello beach near Edinburgh. 

Her death has been treated as unexplained, with many details still missing despite a ‘painstaking investigation’ by police.  

Mr Ahmed said: ‘We as a family still don’t have any closure, we don’t know what’s happened, we still don’t have any answers and we just want to make an appeal to everyone, anyone who she might have talked to.

Saima Ahmed, pictured was reported missing on Sunday August 30, 2015, and her body was found on January 9, 2016 in the grounds of Gogarburn Golf Course, 400 miles from her home in Wembley, north London

‘She’s very inquisitive so she was in areas she’s never been to before, she would ask questions, I imagine she would have spoken to someone.’  

Mr Ahmed said that ‘none of it makes sense’ to the family and ‘time hasn’t helped at all’. 

He said: ‘Every time we think of a scenario it doesn’t make sense to us, it’s so out of character to come here to Edinburgh on her own. 

‘Even how you enter Edinburgh and then how you get to this area, it’s not somewhere you typically walk to, I imagine, on your own so there must have been contact with people.

‘Someone must know something, they must have a conscience. I’d like to think they’d come forward and tell us something.

‘But as every year goes by you lose confidence in getting answers, but we’ll never stop, we’ll never give up hope.’

Mr Ahmed and Detective Superintendent Martin MacLean, pictured right, are appealing for new information about Saima’s death which is still being treated as unexplained 

Detective Superintendent Martin MacLean said the Portobello sightings potentially came on the Sunday evening she was reported missing, and again by a dog walker on the Monday morning.

Police are appealing for anyone who may have interacted with Ms Ahmed – whether a taxi or bus driver, someone at a bed and breakfast, or someone she travelled to Edinburgh to meet.

Mr MacLean said: ‘The thorough and painstaking Police Scotland investigation has so far still unfortunately not been able to identify what Saima did when she arrived in Edinburgh.

‘Today’s appeal is to go back out to the public to ask for anybody out there who can help us with Saima’s movements.

They visited Gogarburn Golf Course on the outskirts of Edinburgh where the body was found 

‘The passage of time from Saima going missing to when her remains were recovered has been the biggest challenge because a lot of the CCTV opportunities disappear.

‘We’ve exhausted every line of inquiry. 

‘She travelled alone, she wasn’t – as far as we can ascertain – travelling to meet anybody, which is not to say that she didn’t meet somebody but we’ve got no evidence to suggest that, and the extensive forensic work that we did with Saima’s remains has not provided any evidence of criminality.’