UK:
Banaz Mahmod was raped and tortured before "honour killing"
Source
: Thisislondon co.uk | Reuters
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UK: Banaz Mahmod was raped and tortured
before "honour killing"
19.7.2007
July
19, 2007
London, UK, -- A Kurdish woman Banaz Mahmod
was brutally raped, stamped on and strangled by
members of her family and their friends in an
"honour killing" carried out at her London home
because she had fallen in love with the wrong man
Rahmat Suleimani, an Iranian Kurd.
Banaz Mahmod, 20-year-old Iraqi Kurd, was subjected
to the 2-1/2 hour ordeal before she was garrotted
with a bootlace. Her body was stuffed into a
suitcase and taken about 100 miles to Birmingham
where it was buried in the back garden of a house.
Banaz disappeared in January last year, and her
badly decomposed body was found in April 2006 buried
in a suitcase in a garden in Birmingham three months
later.
Banaz was garrotted for five minutes but took half
an hour for her to die as her killers stamped on her
neck to "let her soul out".
Last month her father Mahmod Mahmod, 52, and his
brother Ari Mahmod, 52, were found guilty of murder.
They believed Banaz had brought shame on the family
by leaving her husband, an Iraqi Kurd she had been
forced to marry at 17, and falling in love with
Rahmat Suleimani, an Iranian Kurd.
They will be sentenced to life on Friday July 20,
with Mohamad Hama, 30, of West Norwood, south
London, who pleaded guilty.
Others who took part in the killing are on the run.
Judge Brian Barker, the Common Serjeant of London,
sat today to assess the extent of Hama's
involvement.
Mr Temple told him that according to Hama, Banaz was
killed at her family home in Mitcham, south London.
Hama had been secretly taped laughing as he spoke of
the murder to an unnamed visitor who visited him in
Belmarsh prison after his arrest.
Mr Temple quoted Hama as saying: "I swear to God it
took more than two hours.
"Her soul would not leave her body - it took over
half an hour.
"I swear to God, my foot was on her back. I was
kicking or stamping on her neck to get her soul out.
"She was stark naked, only wearing pants and
underwear."
Hama went on: "The wire was thick. The soul would
not just leave like that. The cord was around her
neck, I could not remove it."
Banaz Mahmod Babakir Agha, Found dead, brutally
killed by her family. Banaz had left her husband and
fall in love with an Iranian Kurd.
A combination of undated handout images showing (L)
Ari Mahmod and Mahmod Mahmod, released to Reuters on
June 11, 2007. Mahmod Mahmod was convicted in a
London court on Monday of murdering his 20-year-old
daughter in a so-called "honour killing" because she
had left her husband and fallen in love with another
man. Reuters
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