A married Muslim woman allegedly murdered by her father and uncle for having an affair chillingly foretold her death, a jury heard yesterday.
Giving evidence from beyond the grave, Banaz Mahmod told in a video message how she was “really scared” of her father after she broke her arranged marriage.
And less than a month before her death - allegedly in a so-called ‘honour killing’ - the 20-year-old warned police that her family was plotting to murder her, the Old Bailey was told.
Mrs Mahmod, an Iraqi Kurd whose family were granted asylum in England when she was ten, was garroted with a shoelace, almost certainly in her own home, before her body was stuffed in a suitcase and buried in a back garden, the jury was told.
The killing was ordered by her uncle Ari Agha, 50, at a family meeting, endorsed by her father Mahmod Mahmod, 52, and carried out with assistance of their fellow Kurd Mohamad Hama, who has pleaded guilty to Banaz’s murder, the court heard.
Less than a month before her death in January last year, Banaz had told the police and others that her father and uncle were plotting her murder, and two days before she was killed the family staged a failed kidnap of her boyfriend Rahmat Suleimani, it was claimed.
According to the prosecution, Hama, 30, from West Norwood, South London, told Suleimani: “We’re going to kill you and Banaz, because we’re Muslim and Kurdish. We’re not like the English where you can be boyfriend and girlfriend. We’re going to leave now but we’ll be back again.”
And yesterday in a video recorded on a mobile phone, Banaz told how on New Year’s Eve 2005 her father lured her to her grandmother’s house and plied her with brandy before she fled. Her father had made her carry a suitcase into the house, she said.
Prosecutor Victor Temple QC told the court that the New Year’s Eve incident detailed by Mrs Mahmod in the video “had all the hallmarks of an early attempt to kill her”.
{snip}
http://inverted-world.com/index.php/news/news/honour_killing_wife_condemns_her_father_from_beyond_the_grave/