The tragic love story of Banaz Mahmod's

Killed for daring to fall in love.... 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. Scroll
down for more... {2}
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."