Robber guilty of murder of unarmed policewoman

NEWCASTLE, Dec 18 (Reuters) An armed robber was found guilty today of the murder of a policewoman who was shot dead during a bungled raid on a travel agency.

Yusuf Jama, 20, faces a life sentence for killing Pc Sharon Beshenivsky as she answered an emergency call in Bradford, West Yorkshire.

Two other members of the gang that planned the raid -- brothers Faisal Razzaq, 25, and Hassan Razzaq, 26, were cleared of murder, but found guilty of manslaughter by a jury at Newcastle Crown Court.

Beshenivsky, 38, a mother of three children and two stepchildren, was killed on November 18, her youngest daughter's fourth birthday.

The 999 call had been triggered by a secret alarm in the Universal Express agency in the city's Morley Street.

Within seconds, Beshenivsky and her colleague Pc Teresa Milburn had both been shot in the chest. Milburn was badly wounded.

The blurred CCTV images of the instant the two unarmed officers crumpled to the pavement was one of the defining moments of the trial's start two months ago.

Just days later Jama made a surprise admission when he told the court he was the one who had pulled the trigger. He said the shots had been fired in the heat of the moment and had not been intentional.

Before the trial began, 25-year-old Muzzaker Shah, pleaded guilty to Beshenivsky's murder. He said he had not fired the fatal shot and was cleared of Milburn's attempted murder.

Jama's co-defendant Raza Aslam, who had also been accused of murder, was cleared of all charges today.

The prosecution had argued all the men were guilty of murder regardless of who had fired the fatal shot.

During the trial the jury heard how the men had hoped to get 100,000 pounds from the travel agency which ran a currency exchange and often held large sums of cash.

Reuters AB DB2338