Mother of slain British backpacker Mia Ayliffe-Chung will travel to Queensland to collect ashes

UPDATE: The mother of slain ­British backpacker Mia Ayliffe­-Chung will travel to Queensland to collect her daughter’s ashes, as she plans a multi-faith funeral to celebrate Mia’s life.

Mia Ayliffe-Chung died at a Home Hill hostel last week. Her mother has said she will travel to Queensland to collect her daughter’s ashes.

A PASSAGE from the Koran will be read out at the funeral of murdered British backpacker Mia Ayliffe-Chung.

The 21-year-old’s mother Rosie Ayliffe is planning a multi-faith funeral to celebrate her daughter’s life and decided to include a reading from the Koran in light of the media attention given to the religion of Mia’s alleged killer Smail Ayad.

“After talking about the misrepresentation of Mia’s death in the media as an act of terrorism on the part of an Islamic fundamentalist, the minister delivering the service suggested we include a Koranic reading, and he will find something suitable with a friend who is an Islamic scholar,” she wrote in a blogpost for UK news website The Independent.

Rosie says she will travel to Queensland to collect her daughter’s ashes.

Mia, who was working to extend her stay in Australia, was allegedly stabbed to death by French national Smail Ayad at a Home Hill backpacker hostel last Tuesday.

UK-based Rosie Ayliffe has written in TheIndependent about the difficulty of processing her daughter’s murder in north Queensland after not seeing her for a lengthy period.

“The problem is that I haven’t seen Mia for nearly a year, and so in my head she’s still alive, well and living in Australia, cracking jokes about throwing stones and setting up a stall to sell the rocks she’d picked up as part of her farm work,” Ms Ayliffe wrote.

Tom Jackson remained in a critical condition in hospital.

“I’m fully aware that her body is on a slab somewhere in a cold dark place. She wouldn’t mind the dark, but she’s not good with the cold. I couldn’t bear for her to be kept like that for weeks and decided she needed to be cremated sooner rather than later.”

Ms Ayliffe said she would give Mia’s friends vials of her ashes to scatter in places dear to her or them.

She wrote that the only way she was able to cope with her loss was to think “Mia’s time had come, and what happened in that hostel on Tuesday was her fate”.

“It was always going to ­happen like that. She was lent to us for a period of time and now, in Ben Jonson’s words, she’s been “exacted by the Lord on the just day”.

Ayad has been charged with murder, two counts of ­attempted murder, serious animal cruelty and assaulting 12 police officers.

Tom Jackson, 30, who was stabbed in the face, head and torso trying to save Mia, remained in hospital in a critical condition yesterday.

Ms Ayliffe said whoever killed Mia “now has to live with the fact that they ­destroyed my daughter”.