A FAILED asylum seeker had been deemed a risk to others before he was found dead beside a teenager who was suffocated.

The body of Khalid Peshawan was discovered at a house in Normanton along with that of Halimah Ahmed, 19, last year.

An inquest into their deaths heard how Miss Ahmed's injuries indicated a struggle before she died.

Derby Coroner's Court heard that Mr Peshawan had been referred to a psychiatric nurse months before his death.

It also emerged that three attempts to hold meetings to have the 33-year-old Iraqi sectioned had failed because a social worker could not attend.

Also, Mr Peshawan had been allowed to stay in the country despite being refused asylum and being convicted in September 2003 of stabbing someone outside a nightclub.

Community psychiatric nurse Karen Stone, who met Mr Peshawan, said she had been informed about his conviction but that it was for affray.

She said, if she had known it was related to a stabbing, that information may have changed how he was treated.

Mrs Stone told the hearing yesterday that her first meeting with Mr Peshawan was in August last year.

She said: "He disclosed to me that he had been suicidal for the past two to three years.

"I tried to talk about what he could do if his feelings became overwhelming but he said he would not access any support and that I'd read about it in the newspapers."

At a later meeting, she carried out an assessment, deeming him to be a "significant risk of violence to others" and that there was a "serious risk of suicide and self harm".

The nurse also told how she had tried three times to arrange an assessment that would determine whether Mr Peshawan could be sectioned.

But each time the assessment fell through because no social worker was available.

Dana Besarani, who is considered as a leader within the Kurdish community, gave evidence during the hearing.

He said he had been in contact with Mr Peshawan in the weeks before he was found, on November 27, and that his moods had got worse.

Mr Besarani said: "He said he was going to kill himself."

Mr Peshawan came to the UK in 2000 and applied for asylum that March. His application was refused but he got indefinite leave to stay.

In 2006, he applied for naturalisation, a way of applying for British citizenship.

This was also refused on the grounds that he had "insufficient knowledge of life in the UK".

On November 27 last year, Mr Peshawan's body was found at the house in Moore Street by his brother, Gevari Ali. He was hanging from a cable attached to the stairs.

Miss Ahmed's body was lying on the floor. She had died of suffocation. Six inches of a pillow case had been stuffed into her mouth with up to four inches of her hair.

Miss Ahmed also sustained head injuries which pathologist Dennis Bouch said were in keeping with her head being knocked against a wall or floor, indicating a struggle.

The nature of the relationship between Mr Peshawan, of Moore Street, Normanton, and Miss Ahmed, of Gladstone Street, is not yet clear.

But during the hearing friends of the student told the court how she had been seeing someone called "Pash".

Rachel Thompson, who had known Miss Ahmed since senior school, said: "She used to refer to a man as Pash. She stopped seeing him because he cheated on her."

Danielle Simpson, who went to primary school with Halimah, said she had met "Pash" several times.

She said: "I would not say he was controlling but would say that he was jealous."

Miss Ahmed had dreamed of becoming a UN ambassador and had just started a degree in international relations.

The inquest continues today.