‘HE WASN’T THE SAME MAN ANYMORE’: Wife’s Friends Reveal Chi-lling Changes Before Alleged Suit-case K-i-lling
rom the moment he set foot on the Greek island of Lesvos in 2016, Afghan-born Sharif Ahmadzai embarked on an extraordinary act of self-reinvention.
‘This is my life. I don’t have a family. My family are all dead,’ he told a visiting reporter to Moria Refugee Camp, nine months later in early 2017.
Aged 16 and less than a year after leaving the Afghan capital Kabul – paying people smugglers to transport him to Europe via Iran and Turkey – Ahmadzai had already ditched his Islamic faith and embraced the evangelical Christianity of the NGO supporting him.
Afghan-born Sharif Ahmadzai arrived in Greece from Kabul in 2016, converting from Islam to Christianity
That religious conversion would see him transformed into a poster boy for the refugee cause and become one of its most devoted disciples. His new life as a devout Christian also brought his marriage to a wealthy US missionary, an apartment in Athens, holidays across Europe and even his own refugee charity, set up with his wife Alaina, called ‘Love Every Nation’.
The couple welcomed their first child – a boy – just four months ago.
Ahmadzai’s new life as a devout Christian brought with it his marriage to wealthy US missionary Alaina Hall
But it also saw the 26-year-old amateur boxer and personal trainer cross paths with Elisabeth-Jane Ross, known as Lisa, the British missionary whose body was found dumped in a suitcase in a run-down area of the Greek capital last month.
While Ahmadzai denies killing the 38-year-old lawyer’s daughter from Edinburgh, whom he and his wife met while volunteering together, he admits disposing of her body, stealing her phone and using her bank cards to steal thousands of euros, as well as sending messages to loved ones to fool them into thinking she was still alive.
Elisabeth-Jane Ross, known as Lisa, was found dead in a suitcase in Athens on July 18
He was caught on CCTV wheeling a black suitcase containing Lisa’s body towards an abandoned warehouse.
The Greek coroner’s initial report failed to determine a cause of death but more detailed examinations have concluded it was an ‘obvious criminal act, likely asphyxiation’.
Meanwhile, Ahmadzai’s 28-year-old wife is now in hiding with their baby son in Athens after tipping off police about her concerns for Lisa’s wellbeing and her husband’s possible involvement.
This week, two close friends of the trio in the Greek capital spoke exclusively to the Daily Mail in a bid to explain exactly how this apparently heart-warming refugee fairytale turned into a horror story of such monumental proportions.
According to the friends, two evangelical Christian women from southern US states who also work as volunteers, Alaina had noted a change in her ‘very handsome’ husband over the past 18 months.
‘There were problems going on in the marriage,’ one of them said. ‘She felt that he had started questioning his commitment to Christianity. Alaina was raised in a very strong Christian home and Sharif’s childhood was obviously different coming from a strict Muslim country.
‘He became more aloof and seemed more focused on boxing and his friends than doing “God’s work”, as Alaina put it.
‘I think he went more to the boxing gym than to church and Alaina became worried about this.’
Alaina was also concerned, they said, that her husband was hanging around bars in Athens ‘as if he was a single man’.
‘She felt that he’d changed and wasn’t as passionate about Christianity as when they first met,’ they added.
‘He converted to Christianity within a year of arriving in Greece and as time went on, maybe she started questioning whether he did it because he really believed in it or because he wanted to strengthen his refugee case. We have heard of a lot of cases like this.’
Tributes have been paid to Lisa Ross, a Scottish missionary who worked with Ahmadzai in Greece
Amid this growing marital tension, Lisa arrived in Greece at the end of June and stayed in the Keratsini area of Piraeus until July 10 before going to stay at the apartment used by Alaina and Ahmadzai’s charity.
Lisa, they believe, found herself caught up in the couple’s difficulties and, as a devout Christian herself, may have challenged Ahmadzai about his wavering faith.
‘Alaina is very open with her emotions,’ said the other friend. ‘She shared this with us and I’m sure with Lisa.
‘Alaina thought of Lisa as a friend and she must have confided in her.
‘Maybe she challenged Sharif and he hit out in anger. He was a boxer, very strong and all it would have taken is one punch or push and somebody could get seriously injured.’
‘He was a boxer, very strong and all it would have taken is one punch or push and somebody could get seriously injured,’ one woman tells the Daily Mail
Lisa, who they describe as ‘straight-talking and honest, the type of person who would have said something’ had been visiting Athens for the past ten years as part of her missionary work.
But even as a child Lisa was putting others before herself.
A photograph published in the Edinburgh Evening News back in November 1998 shows her, aged ten, sitting among a pile of teddy bears sold at a church charity fundraiser for Central American victims of Hurricane Mitch.
Lisa, aged ten, sits among a pile of teddy bears sold as part of a church charity fundraiser for victims of Hurricane Mitch, 1998
She grew up with her parents, commercial lawyer Ken and former schoolteacher Julie, along with her twin sister Joanne, and younger siblings Katie and James in a cottage on the edge of the Edinburgh suburb of Currie.
Raised in a devout Christian household, she dedicated her entire adult life to travelling around the globe while helping those in need.
In a statement released this week her family described her as ‘kind, principled and selfless’.
Her principles eventually brought her to Athens where she worked for One Heart, a Christian NGO providing medical support to refugees and the Melissa Network, a support network for migrant and refugee women which is also based in the Greek capital.
It was through this work that she met Alaina Hall and, fatefully, Sharif Ahmadzai.
Raised in a devout Christian household, Lisa dedicated her entire adult life to travelling around the globe while helping those in need
Ahmadzai’s childhood in war-torn Afghanistan could not have been more different to Lisa’s.
Born in the city of Gardez in south-eastern Afghanistan, his father, he claims, was a commander in the Afghan army, shot dead by Taliban insurgents when Ahmadzai was four.
His older brother, Samuel, was kidnapped by the Taliban and not seen again. The rest of his family – his mother, older sister and younger brother – were killed, he says, by a suicide bomb in November 2015 after the family moved to the capital Kabul.
Instagram posts show Sharif Ahmadzai at a boxing gym in Kabul, Afghanistan
‘There was no reason for me to stay in Kabul,’ he wrote on the website for the charity he set up with his American wife. ‘It was painful to be there. I took the money my family left and I decided to leave.’
He set off in December 2015 walking across mountains to reach Iran before being stopped at the border and sent back to Afghanistan.
A month later, at the beginning of 2016, he set off again, paying people smugglers to get him across the border from Iran to Turkey. He spent a couple of months in Istanbul before travelling by small boat to Greece.
His first two attempts failed after the vessel he was in was turned back by the Turkish Coast Guard. The third time, he claims, his was the only boat out of three packed full of migrants to arrive safely on Lesvos. The others sank.
‘Finally I had arrived in Europe,’ he wrote in his dramatic account which at the time of Lisa’s death he and his wife were in the process of turning into a life-affirming book.
‘I was only 16 and I had no one,’ he wrote. ‘I knew I couldn’t give up so I made friends, started studying English and started translating for an organisation in the camp.’
The Red Cross has now deleted a four-minute cartoon film it made of Ahmadzai’s journey from Afghanistan to Europe. In it he said that his original intention was to come to the UK where he has an aunt who said she’d look after him.
Life in overcrowded Moria Refugee Camp was undoubtedly tough.
Back in 2016, Lesvos, then more commonly known as Lesbos, was at the front line of Europe’s refugee crisis thanks to its position just a few miles from the Turkish coast.
Ahmadzai, however, was offered a room in the home of American missionary Jeremy Holloman, site co-ordinator for the largest aid group active in Moria, a Christian evangelical aid organisation called EuroRelief.
Holloman’s wife, Marianna, taught Ahmadzai English. He referred to the couple as his ‘family’. Neither responded to emails this week asking about their dealings with him.
But a couple who took in Ahmadzai after his tent burned down during his time in the camp, told the Daily Mail this week they were ‘heartbroken’ to learn of his arrest and insisted he had never displayed any behaviour that concerned them.
In August 2016 EuroRelief, which is part of a bigger organisation called Hellenic Ministries, came under fire amid reports that its aid workers were distributing conversion forms inside Arabic copies of the St John’s Gospel among the predominantly Muslim migrants.
There were claims, too, of preferential treatment given to Christian refugees or those who converted.
The organisation said at the time that it disapproved of the distribution of ‘conversion’ materials but couldn’t rule out the possibility that individual aid workers had handed out the booklets themselves.
While it’s impossible to say who, or what, exactly lay behind his conversion to Christianity, Ahmadzai quickly became an enthusiastic volunteer for EuroRelief and was eventually granted asylum.
He met his future wife when she travelled to the island as an 18-year-old Christian volunteer also working with EuroRelief.
Alaina, a FedEx pilot’s daughter from Ringgold in Georgia, grew up in a wealthy and deeply religious Baptist church family and was educated, like her older brother, in a private Christian school.
Home was in an exclusive gated community and the Halls also own a $750,000 cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Alaina and Ahmadzai became friends before falling in love after Ahmadzai moved to Athens in 2020. They exchanged marriage vows during a traditional white wedding in Greece in 2023.
According to Alaina’s aunt, her parents, Tom and Susan, had grave doubts about the match and ‘never wanted them to get married’.
Married life certainly appears to have been good for Ahmadzai.
In recent years his Instagram pages have been filled with smiling pictures of the couple both in Greece and on holidays across Europe.
They spent time in Rome, Milan, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and Brussels. They travelled to Seville and went whale-watching in Portugal.
On one photograph Ahmadzai posted he wrote: ‘Just grateful for the gift of life.’
At the heart of their relationship – at least until recently – appears to have been their shared love of God and the Bible and their small charity, Love Every Nation, which they founded in 2023.
They distributed food, baby milk and medicines to families in need, claiming on their website: ‘We love Jesus and want others to know him too.’
Ahmadzai, who won a Greek super lightweight boxing title in March, also offered free training to boys.
Alaina and Ahmadzai exchanged marriage vows during a traditional white wedding in Greece in 2023
In a video on their website, since taken down, he said, speaking in an American accent: ‘I am thankful to God that he allowed me to teach boxing and that I can share Christ. This is a great gift from God.’
However, Ahmadzai had also shown signs of disillusionment.
In Facebook posts dating back to last year Ahmadzai accused some Christian organisations operating in Greece of exploiting refugees and volunteers for financial gain.
He claimed that some charged volunteers registration fees and wrote of crowded accommodation and misused donations. He shared images promoting the slogan ‘Boycott corrupt NGOs’.
Alaina told police this week that she and Ahmadzai first met Lisa in Athens in February while volunteering.
She described her as a ‘very pleasant and sweet person, kind-hearted, with a good soul’.
She claimed that after the three had gone on a walk, her husband remained in touch with Lisa, who asked him for help delivering bibles, for several days.
In Facebook posts dating back to last year Ahmadzai accused some Christian organisations operating in Greece of exploiting refugees and volunteers for financial gain
Meanwhile, she last saw Lisa on July 12 after a bible study meeting.
According to court documents, on July 15 Alaina saw a text message sent by Lisa to Ahmadzai which said: ‘Thank you for your intention to come with me.’
That evening, Alaina said, she woke to find her husband missing.
After checking the Find Friends app on her phone, she saw he was at the Rethymnou Street apartment where Lisa was staying.
The address on Rethymnou Street where Lisa had been staying; Ahmadzai had keys to the flat as it was owned by their organisation, Love Every Nation Athens
When she confronted him, he said he’d been out watching a football match and had gone to the apartment to use the toilet. Lisa’s body was discovered on July 18.
In the days that followed, Alaina said her husband appeared to be upset, blaming the death of a relative in India. He took her and his son to the mountain resort town of Arachova, two hours drive away.
After hearing that a body had been found stuffed in a suitcase, Alaina woke up in the night on July 29 with a ‘terrible’ feeling. In the morning she sent a text to Lisa and received two replies which made her suspicious.
Having received no response, she got in contact with police later that day with her concerns and Ahmadzai was arrested on August 1.
’These messages were not in Lisa’s style, both in terms of her level of English and the use of emojis that she never used,’ she told detectives.
‘All of the above made me feel strange. Especially combining the dates, the messages and my husband’s behaviour. I have various thoughts that make me feel uncomfortable.’
Detectives then found CCTV footage showing her husband leaving the apartment in Rethymnou Street with a suitcase.
After she tracked his location, Ahmadzai claimed to his wife that he had visited Lisa’s flat to use the bathroom
After his arrest he claimed he found Lisa dying in the bathroom on the evening of July 15 where she was ‘spitting something like water out of her mouth’.
‘I spoke to her two or three times but she didn’t respond. I froze my legs went numb,’ he said. He says he returned the next day to find her dead.
He claims he panicked and asked an elderly man near a bus stop what he should do after finding a body.
‘The old man told me that what I should do is remove it from the house, or I will get into trouble. I sat and thought about what he told me for a few hours.’
Police escort Ahmadzai out of a court hearing regarding the death of Lisa Ross
Ahmadzai says he returned to the apartment the next day and placed Lisa’s body in a suitcase before putting it in the boot of his wife’s red Peugeot. He drove towards an abandoned building near his own home.
‘There I found the old man I told you about who gave me the advice. He told me to leave the suitcase with him and he would take of it,’ he said in his statement.
‘As far as I know, this old man’s name is Nikos and he frequents the place where I left the suitcase.’
The money he stole using Lisa’s bank cards, he said, was to pay Nikos who was ‘blackmailing me that he would tell everything to the police’. It almost goes without saying that police do not believe that Nikos ever existed.
In Evelpidon court in Athens this week, Ahmadzai was charged with homicide with intent, robbery and weapons offences after investigators found a replica Glock-style pistol and a military-style knife at his home.
As stories go, the desperate tale he has offered in his defence is as extraordinary as the one he told when he arrived on Lesvos a decade ago, dreaming of a brighter future in Europe.
Until these sickening events unfolded in Athens, it really looked as if that dream had come true.
