Murder girl's five cries for help that were ignored

[leobold1]

Murder girl's five cries for help that were ignored | the Daily Mail

By FIONA BARTON and STEPHEN WRIGHT - More by this author »

Last updated at 11:17am on 12th June 2007

As a teenager's father and uncle are found guilty in 'honour killing' case, police face an investigation for failing to respond to her desperate warnings. These reports from Fiona Barton and Stephen Wright.

Five police officers are under investigation after a series of terrible blunders left a young Muslim woman at the mercy of killers in her own family.

Banaz Mahmod, 20, was strangled with a bootlace on the orders of her father and uncle, both Iraqi Kurds who ruled their families with violence and fear.

At the Old Bailey yesterday, Mahmod Mahmod, 52, and Ari Mahmod, 51, both from Mitcham, South London, were convicted of Banaz's murder after a three-month trial and will be sentenced later.

The jury heard that she died on the orders of a sinister "court" because she had left an abusive arranged marriage and fallen in love with an "unsuitable" man, Rahmat Sulemani, bringing shame on the family.

It also emerged that in the two months before her death she had warned police four times that she believed her family wanted to murder her.

On one occasion she even recorded a chilling video message on a mobile phone - played to the jury - revealing her terror. In addition, she wrote a letter naming those she thought would do it, and deposited it with detectives, "in the event of her death".

The police, however, dismissed her desperate warnings, with one female officer saying she thought she had made up the story to get her boyfriend's attention.

On New Year's Eve 2005, Banaz was found bleeding and terrified after her father tried to kill her. But PC Angela Cornes simply dismissed her as "dramatic and calculating".

Instead of protecting the victim, the officer even considered charging the young woman with criminal damage because she had broken a window to escape.

PC Cornes admitted in court she might have made "a dreadful mistake" and Scotland Yard has launched an internal review into its handling of the case.

She is one of the five officers facing an internal disciplinary investigation over the Metropolitan Police's handling of the case.

The court heard that three weeks after that contact, Banaz was deliberately left alone in the family home by her parents and the assassins were given the go-ahead.

Following the murder, before which she is believed to have been raped, her body was stuffed into a suitcase and driven to Birmingham by one of the killers, Mohamad Hama. Two other suspects are believed to have fled to Iraq.

The unnamed men are said to have boasted about raping Miss Mahmod in her home before they garroted her with a bootlace and stuffed her body in a suitcase.

One is a rebel fighter who is believed to have killed several people in his homeland of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Banaz was buried in the garden of a house rented by an associate of Ari Mahmod and the Kurdish community immediately began to cover up the crime, telling police that Banaz was not missing and the Mahmods were a liberal family.

The truth was revealed when Banaz's body was found three months later and her sister, Bekhal, agreed to give evidence against her relatives.

Neither Mahmod nor Ari showed any emotion as the guilty verdicts were delivered. Mohamad Hama, 30, of South Norwood, had already admitted the killing.

Bekhal, 22, wept with emotion when her father and uncle were convicted. She had also been the subject of a murder plot. Her "crime"? Smoking and wearing hairspray like a "Westerner".

Bekhal says she was beaten with shoes and sticks as a teenager and banned from leaving the house. Her uncle Ari threatened her, saying: "If I was your father, I would have done it by now. I would have killed you. You would have been turned into ash by now."

Bekhal went into voluntary foster care but she told the jury that she was sent a tape, warning that she would be killed, and was lured to a meeting in a pub car park by her brother, who hit her on the side of the head with a dumb bell.

He then broke down in tears and confessed their father had paid him to carry out the attack, saying: "Don't make this harder than it already is. I have to do it. It is my duty to finish you off."

Official police figures show 19 confirmed "honour killings" in the last decade, but the British courts are dealing with a further eight cases.

One charity claims at least eight women have deposited statements, DNA evidence and video interviews with police in different parts of the country, in case they are killed.

Politicians have also pointed out that the astonishingly high suicide rate among Asian women in Britain - three times the national average - could hide other casualties.

Commander Simon Bray, of the Metropolitan Police, said: "Banaz and her boyfriend had contact with the police on five occasions.

"The question for the internal review is what was a reasonable response for these officers based on what they knew and she was prepared to tell them.' Asked whether the Met had blood on its hands, Commander Bray said: 'Clearly the police were not responsible for her murder. There were people determined to punish and kill her.

"The question is whether there were ways we should have stopped what happened.'

-----------------

Banaz fell in love at 19... So her family decided she had to die
By Fiona Barton

As one of five daughters in a strictly-traditional Kurdish family, Banaz Mahmod's future was ordained whether she liked it or not.

She was kept away from Western influences, entered an arranged marriage at the age of 16 with a member of her clan and was expected to fulfil the role of subservient wife and mother.

But Banaz, a bright, pretty 19-year-old, fell in love with another man.

And for that, she was murdered by her father, uncle and a group of family friends. The very people who should have protected her from harm plotted her killing, garrotted her with a bootlace, stuffed her body in a suitcase and buried her under a freezer.

Banaz's crime was to "dishonour" her father, Mahmod Mahmod, an asylum seeker from Iraqi Kurdistan, by leaving her abusive marriage and choosing her own boyfriend - a man from a different Kurdish clan.

Her punishment was discussed at a family "council of war" attended by her father, uncle Ari and other members of the clan. In the living room of a suburban semi in Mitcham, South London, it was decided that this young woman's life was to be snuffed out so that her family would not be shamed in the eyes of the community.

Banaz was only ten when she came to Britain with her father, who had served in the Iraqi army, her mother Behya, brother Bahman and sisters Beza, Bekhal, Payman and Giaband.

The family, who came from the mountainous and rural Mirawaldy area, close to the Iranian border, were escaping Saddam Hussein's regime and were granted asylum.

But Banaz's move to a western country changed nothing about the life she was made to lead.

She had met her husband-tobe only three times before her wedding day, once on her father's allotment. He was ill-educated and old-fashioned but her family described him as 'the David Beckham of husbands'. The teenage bride, who was taken to live in the West Midlands, was to tell local police in September 2005 that she had been raped at least six times and routinely beaten by her husband.

In one assault, she claimed, one of her teeth was almost knocked out because she called him by his first name in public.

To leave the arranged marriage would have brought dishonour on the Mahmod family and Banaz's parents apparently preferred their child to suffer abuse rather than be shamed.

But after two years of marriage, she insisted on returning home to seek sanctuary. It was there, at a family party in the late summer of 2005, that she met Rahmat Sulemani.

For the first time in her blighted existence, Banaz fell in love. She was besotted with Rahmat, 28, calling him 'my prince' and sending endless loving text messages. Her father and uncle Ari were furious; the young woman was not yet formally divorced by her husband and her boyfriend was neither from their clan nor religious. More importantly, perhaps, he had not been chosen by her family.

Mahmod became enraged when his daughter refused to give up her boyfriend and talked of being in love.

The threat to family honour was immense and made worse by the fact that Banaz's elder sister, Bekhal, had already brought "shame" on the family by moving out of the house at the age of 15, to escape her father's violence.

Bekhal's defiance meant that Mahmod lost status in the community because he was seen to have failed to control his women and his younger brother Ari, a wealthy entrepreneur who ran a money transfer business, took over as head of the family.

It was he who telephoned Banaz on December 1, 2005 to tell her to end the affair with Rahmat or face the consequences.

The following day, Ari called a council of war to plan her murder and the disposal of her body. She was secretly warned by her mother that the lives of her and her boyfriend were in danger, and she went to Mitcham Police Station to report the death threat. But she was so terrified of her family's reaction that she asked police to take no action and refused to move to a refuge.

The next day, an officer called at the family home but Banaz would not let him in.

She believed that her mother would protect her from harm but as an insurance against her disappearance, went back to the police station a week later to make a full statement, naming the men she believed would kill her.

One of the men was Mohamad Hama, who has admitted murder and two of the others named fled back to Iraq after the killing. On New Year's Eve 2005, she was lured to her grandmother's house in nearby Wimbledon for a meeting with her father and uncle to sort out her divorce.

When her father appeared wearing surgical gloves, ready to kill her, she ran out barefoot, broke a window to get into a neighbour's house and then ran to a nearby cafe, covered in blood from cuts to her hands and screaming: "They're trying to kill me".

The officers who attended the scene and accompanied Banaz to hospital did not believe her story.

However, the distressed and injured victim was able to give her own testimony about the attack to the jury in a short video recorded on Rahmat's mobile phone at St George's Hospital, Tooting.

The terrified lovers pretended they had parted but they continued to meet in secret. Tragically, they were spotted together in Brixton on January 21 and the Mahmods were informed.

Mohamad Hama and three other men tried to kidnap Rahmat and, when his friends intervened, told him he would be killed later.

When he phoned to warn Banaz, she went to the police and said she would co- operate in bringing charges against her family and other members of the community.

The policewoman who saw Banaz tried to persuade her to go into a hostel or safe house but she thought she would be safe at home because her mother was there.

On January 24, Banaz was left on her own at the family house and her assassins, Hama and two associates, were alerted.

The full details of what happened to her are still not known but two of the suspects, Omar Hussein and Mohammed Ali, who fled back to Iraq after the killing, are said to have boasted that Banaz was raped before she was strangled, "to show her disrespect".

There followed a "massively challenging" investigation into her disappearance by detectives, fearing the worst. The family's appalling crime was finally exposed when, three months after she went missing, Banaz's remains were found, with the bootlace still around her neck.

The discovery of her body provoked no emotion in her father and uncle. Even at her funeral, the only tears were from Banaz's brother.

"She had a small life," a detective on the case said. "There is no headstone on her grave, nothing there to mark her existence."

Yesterday, her devastated boyfriend, who has been given a new identity by the Home Office under the witness protection programme, said: "Banaz was my first love. She meant the world to me."

The dead girl's older sister, Bekhal, urged other women in the same position as her and her sister to seek help before it is too late.

Even today she continues to fear for her life, lives at a secret address and never goes out without wearing a long black veil that covers her entire body and face apart from her eyes.

She strongly rejected the suggestion that Banaz had brought "shame" on her Kurdish family by falling in love with a man they did not approve of, saying her sister simply wanted to live her own life.

"There's a lot of evil people out there. They might be your own blood, they might be a stranger to you, but they are evil.

"They come over here, thinking they can still carry on the same life and make people carry on how they want them to live life."

Asked what was in her father's mind on the day that Banaz died, Bekhal replied: "All I can say is devilishness. How can somebody think that kind of thing and actually do it to your own flesh and blood? It's disgusting."

Bekhal says she is scared whenever she sees somebody from the same background as her.

"I watch my back 24/7."

[conlor]

At least one of them got away. I pray she doesn't meet the same fate, nor her other sisters.