http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19176808/
Father in 'honor killing' found guilty of murder
Brit ordered his daughter strangled for falling in love with wrong
man
Image: Banaz Mahmod
LONDON - A father who ordered his daughter brutally slain for
falling in love with the wrong man in a so-called honor killing
was found guilty of murder on Monday.
Banaz Mahmod, 20, was strangled with a boot lace, stuffed into a
suitcase and buried in a back garden.
Her death is the latest in an increasing trend of such killings in
Britain, home to some 1.8 million Muslims. More than 100 homicides
are under investigation as potential honor killings.
Mahmod Mahmod, 52, and his brother Ari Mahmod, 51, planned the
killing during a family meeting, prosecutors told the court. Two
others have pleaded guilty in the case. Two more suspects have fled
the country. Sentencing is expected later this month.
The men accused the young woman of shaming her family by ending an
abusive arranged marriage, becoming too Westernized and falling in
love with a man who didnt come from their Iraqi village. The
Kurdish family came to Britain in 1998 when Banaz Mahmod was
11.
She was my present, my future, my hope, said Rahmat Suleimani,
29, Banaz Mahmods boyfriend.
During the three-month trial, prosecutors said Mahmods father beat
his daughter for using hairspray and adopting other Western ways.
Her uncle once told her she would have been turned to ashes if
she were his daughter and had shamed the family by becoming
involved with the Iranian Kurd, her sister 22-year-old Bekhal
Mahmod testified.
Banaz Mahmod ran away from home when she was a teenager but
returned when her father sent her an audio tape in which he warned
he would kill her sisters, her mother and himself if she did not
come home, her sister said.
She was later hospitalized after her brother attacked her, the
sister told the court. The brother said he had been paid by their
father to finish her off but in the end was unable to do it, said
the sister, who testified in a full black burqa. She said she still
feared for her own life.
Bekhal Mahmod, Banaz's sister, testified that that her brother was
ordered to kill Banaz, but couldn't go through with it.
The years of Banaz Mahmods abuse were compounded by police
officers who repeatedly dismissed her cries for help.
She first went to police in December 2005, saying she suspected her
uncle was trying to kill her and her boyfriend. She sent police a
letter naming the men who she thought would later kill her.
On New Years Eve, she was lured by her father to her grandmothers
home, where she suspected he planned to attack her after he forced
her to gulp down brandy and approached her while wearing gloves.
She escaped by breaking a window and was treated at a
hospital.
Police dismissed her suspicions, and one officer, who is under
investigation, considered charging her with damages for breaking
her grandmothers window.
Laying in her hospital bed after the escape, Mahmod recorded a
dramatic video message saying she was really scared.
The videotape, taken by her boyfriend at the hospital, was shown to
the jury during the trial.
Woman told family she wasn't seeing boyfriend
After she was released from the hospital, she returned home and
tried to convince her family she had stopped seeing her
boyfriend.
But friends told the family they spotted the couple together on
Jan. 22, 2006.
Soon after, a group of men allegedly approached her boyfriend and
tried to lure him into a car but he refused. It was that event that
prompted Banaz Mahmod to go to police again. This time officers
tried to persuade her to stay in a safe house. She refused,
believing that her mother would protect her.
But her mother and father left her alone in the house the next day.
Her boyfriend alerted police after time passed in which she failed
to send him text messages.
Her body wasnt discovered until three months later after police
tracked phone records.
Britain has seen more than 25 women killed by their Muslim
relatives in the past decade for offenses they believed brought
shame on the family. More than 100 other homicides are under
investigation as potential honor killings.
Some Muslim communities in Britain practice Sharia, or strict
Islamic law.
Were seeing an increase around the world, due in part to the rise
in Islamic fundamentalism, said Diana Nammi with the London-based
Iranian and Kurdish Womens Rights Organization.
A perfect example of imposition of the hardcore minority on
another country . Imposing their values on a society that cannot
accept their ways.
