A woman told a murder trial she was wakened at 3am by sounds of thumping coming from the flat above.

Shannara Fraser, 30, a shop worker, was giving evidence at the trial of Muhammed Rauf, 42, Shahida Abid, 33, and Saima Hayat, 33, who deny murdering 49-year-old Haider Hayat by striking him on the head and body with a hammer and a knife, on April 3, last year, at a flat in Raithburn Road, Castlemilk, Glasgow,

They also deny attempting to defeat the ends of justice by washing bloodstained clothing and concocting a false story.

In evidence, Ms Fraser told prosecutor Richard Goddard QC: “There was like thumping noises and other noises. I heard a man saying something like El Paulo or El Pablo.

“It sounded as if someone pressed down on him, and he tried to kind of shout it out. It sounded like air was being forced out of his lungs.”

Ms Fraser told the High Court in Glasgow that she recorded the sounds because she had complained previously about noise coming from the flat occupied by Hayat and her five children..

She said: “I was told to record any noise, so I did.”

The jury was played two short recordings from her phone. In the first a man can be heard saying something and in the second tape there is continuous thumping.

Mr Goddard asked Ms Fraser: “What could you hear in the second recording,: and she replied: “Just continuous thumping. It's horrible sounding.”

Earlier, Mohammed Asif, 59, who is Mr Hayat's brother, claimed that his brother was 'terrified of his wife Saima Hayat.

He told the jury: 'She planned to do him in. He was scared of this woman.”

Mr Asif claimed that his brother had been assaulted by his wife in 2013 and in 2018.