On 15 March 2004, Kriss Donald was abducted from Kenmure Street by five men associated with a local Pakistani gang led by Imran Shahid. The kidnapping was ostensibly revenge for an attack on Shahid at a nightclub in Glasgow city centre the night before by a local white gang, and Donald was chosen as an example of a “white boy from the McCulloch Street area” despite having no involvement in the nightclub attack or in any gang activity. The issue of the killing quickly became politicised because of the racial element. After the murder there were reportedly ‘racial tensions’ in the area sufficient to lead to police intervention. Initially, two men were arrested in connection with the crime. One man, Daanish Zahid, was found guilty of Kriss Donald’s murder on 18 November 2004 and is the first person to be convicted of racially motivated murder in Scotland. Another man, Zahid Mohammed, admitted involvement in the abduction of Donald and lying to police during their investigation and was jailed for five years. He was released after serving half of his sentence and returned to court to give evidence against three subsequent defendants.

Three suspects were arrested in Pakistan in July 2005 and extradited to the UK in October 2005, following the intervention of Mohammed Sarwar, the MP for Glasgow Central. The Pakistani police had to engage in a “long struggle” to capture two of the escapees. There is no extradition treaty between Pakistan and Britain, but the Pakistani authorities agreed to extradite the suspects. There were numerous diplomatic complications around the case, including apparent divergences between government activities and those of ambassadorial officials; government figures were at times alleged to be reluctant to pursue the case for diplomatic reasons. The three extradited suspects, Imran Shahid, Zeeshan Shahid, and Mohammed Faisal Mushtaq, all in their late twenties, arrived in Scotland on 5 October 2005. They were charged with Kriss Donald’s murder the following day. Their trial opened on 2 October 2006 in Scotland. On 8 November 2006, the three men were found guilty of the racially motivated murder of Kriss Donald. All three had denied the charge; however, a jury at the High Court in Edinburgh convicted them of abduction and murder.