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UK: PC Angela Cornes decided Banaz Mahmod
was a lying drunk
1.12.2008 |
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December 1, 2008
LONDON, UK,— On a wet New Year’s Eve, two
police officers were called to a café in Wimbledon
where a young woman had collapsed in the doorway,
barefoot, bleeding and pleading for help.
Banaz Mahmod, 20, an Iraqi Kurd, told PC Angela
Cornes and a colleague that her father had forced
her to drink brandy and tried to kill her. That
afternoon, her father, Mahmod Mahmod, had driven her
to her grandmother’s house, taken her into the
living room and ordered her to consume half a bottle
of spirits.
She had never before drunk alcohol. She was told to
sit on the floor, facing away from her father, who
left, and returned wearing a pair of gloves. Miss
Mahmod was dizzy and scared. When she tried to leave
the room her father, 52, told her to sit down and
suggested that she must be feeling sleepy. |
Banaz Mahmod Babakir Agha, Found dead, brutally
killed by her family. Banaz had left her husband and
fall in love with an Iranian Kurd. |
When he again left the
room, she fled through the back door and shouted for
help, smashing two windows at a neighbouring house
to try to raise the alarm. No help came so she
jumped over a fence and ran – barefoot and bleeding
from cuts to both wrists – to the southwest London
café.
Miss Mahmod might be alive today had PC Cornes
considered the possibility that she was telling the
truth. Instead, the experienced officer, trained in
dealing with female victims of violence, sized up
the frightened girl and believed her to be a lying,
manipulative, attention-seeking drunk.
Customers in the café were puzzled by the officers’
attitude. Nurari Merry, a businesswoman who tried to
comfort Miss Mahmod, told The Times that they
appeared “slightly offhand”. “She was trying to get
somebody to take her seriously, but nobody did. A
male officer took notes; the female officer was a
little bit dismissive of the situation. They asked
her a couple of questions but the ambulance crew
took care of it and tried to work out what happened.
Police acted as though she was drunk or on drugs.”
PC Cornes broke guidelines by failing to accompany
Miss Mahmod to hospital, where she became so
terrified of leaving the ambulance that a security
guard was summoned to protect her. “My father and my
uncle are trying to kill me,” she told a nurse.
PC Cornes contacted Miss Mahmod’s father and
arranged to meet him at the grandmother’s house.
There, she again broke the rules by telling Mahmod
of his daughter’s allegations. Her main focus,
however, was on the broken windows next door.
The crime report that PC Cornes filed made no
mention of any alleged attempt on Miss Mahmod’s
life. Instead, it accused her of responsibility for
an act of criminal damage.
A few days later, the officer visited Miss Mahmod,
who had left hospital and was back at the family’s
home in Mitcham, where she thought her mother would
protect her. The officer wanted a signed admission
that she had smashed the windows. In a witness
statement after Miss Mahmod disappeared, PC Cornes
described the young woman – whose naked body was, by
now, lying in a makeshift grave beneath a pile of
bin bags – as “dramatic and calculating”. When she
gave evidence for the defence in the subsequent
murder trial, PC Cornes agreed that she had not
believed Miss Mahmod’s allegations. She thought she
was drunk and seeking attention from her boyfriend.
At the Old Bailey, Mahmod and his brother Ari were
convicted of murder in June last year and will serve
at least 20 and 23 years in jail respectively.
The trial exposed the insidious brutality of the
“honour”-obsessed culture that has dominated
sections of the Iraqi Kurdish community in South
London. Also revealed were lamentable failings in a
policing system that was supposed to provide support
and protection to victims of such violence.
Miss Mahmod, one of six children, was 10 when her
Muslim family fled Saddam Hussein’s regime. They
arrived in Britain with rural tribal traditions that
the men of the family were determined to maintain.
When Banaz was 17, she was married to an older man,
an Iraqi Kurd from the West Midlands. The two-year
relationship was violent. In September 2005 Miss
Mahmod fled home. At a family function, she met
Rahmat Sulemani, a young Iraqi Kurd, and fell in
love with him.
Mahmod forbade the relationship but the couple began
meeting in secret. On December 2, a cousin saw them
kissing outside a Tube station.
When Mahmod found out, he told Ari, 51, a successful
businessman and the self-appointed head of the
family. Ari decided that his niece must die. The
death sentence was passed at a family meeting. Miss
Mahmod’s mother, told of the decision, warned her
daughter, who went to the police.
It was the first of what would be four encounters
with the Metropolitan Police during which Miss
Mahmod claimed that her family were planning to kill
her. The third was in the café when PC Cornes was,
perhaps, unaware that Miss Mahmod had already given
officers a list naming the Kurdish men who she
believed had been ordered to kill her. After his
brother’s failure to restore family “honour”, Ari
would not countenance a second error.
On January 23, Miss Mahmod made her final visit to
her local police station to tell officers that Mr
Sulemani’s life had been threatened by men who tried
to drag him into a car.
Further threats had been made against her life, she
said, but she rejected the offer of a refuge and
returned home. She wanted the police to know about
her fears, she said, in case anything bad happened
to her.
The next day her parents left early, by arrangement.
Three killers came to the house. Miss Mahmod was
beaten, raped and strangled. One of the men was
recorded secretly, later, as he complained that she
had taken two hours to die and that he had kicked
and stamped on her neck for half an hour.
From death threats to a
collapsed inquiry
-December 4, 2005 Banaz Mahmod tells police of
uncle’s threats to kill her
-December 5 Police visit her home. She says she does
not want to pursue the allegations
-December 12 She gives police a letter naming her
potential killers
-December 31 Her father tries to kill her but she
flees. PC Angela Cornes attends and files crime
report about damage to a window but makes no
reference to the murder allegations. Rahmat Sulemani,
with whom Miss Mahmod was in love, records her
claims on his mobile phone. She returns to his home
-January 2, 2006 Miss Mahmod meets her sisters and
mother and is persuaded to return home
-January 22 A Kurdish gang threatens Mr Sulemani
-January 23 He tells police. Miss Mahmod tells
police of death threats. She declines a place in a
hostel
-January 24 Miss Mahmod is murdered. Police call at
the family home. Her father says she is out
-January 25 Parents tell police they do not want to
report her missing
-January 27 Full investigation begins
-Date unknown PC Cornes signs statement detailing
her impression that Miss Mahmod was a drunken,
melodramatic attention-seeker
-April 28 Miss Mahmod’s body found in a suitcase in
Birmingham
-June 11, 2007 Her father and an uncle convicted of
murder at the Old Bailey. A third man admits murder
-June 18 IPCC announces inquiry
-April 2, 2008 Six detectives receive written
warning and a constable receives words of advice,
but PC Cornes and an inspector are told they will
face a disciplinary panel
-November 17 All disciplinary proceedings dropped
because of “insufficient evidence”. PC Cornes and
the inspector are told that they will receive words
of advice
-November 28 IPCC tells The Times no final decision
has been taken to drop disciplinary action, but then
confirms that case has collapsed
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
timesonline.co.uk
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