Banaz suspect to be extradited
Many of you will remember the killing of Banaz Mahmood, a young Kurdish woman who was brutally murdered by her relatives, who raped and then tortured her. While her father and two other relatives had been caught and convicted, a number of the murderers fled back to Kurdistan, where their allies and the uncertain legal nature of Kurdistan made it very difficult to extradite them back to the UK. Happily, one of the suspects, Mohammad Saleh Ali, is now to face trial in British courts. Congratulations are due to IKWRO, the International Campaign Against Honour Killings and the other groups that formed the ‘Justice for Banaz’ campaign.
Yet there is still more to be done. Another suspect remains free in Kurdistan, while the failure to properly censure the behaviour of PC Angela Cornes during Banaz’s last days leaves a bad taste in the mouth, as well as pointing to the potential for such actions to occur again.
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Filed in: Cultural Relativism
Rumbold, this is very good news.
However I think there is an inaccuracy in your post. The rapists and perpetrators were thugs called in by the father.
One presumes in a twisted world of honour killings, the rapists themselves should now be targets for bringing dishonour on that family. And of course the father would, I imagine, himself have lost all honour he thought he was protecting by letting his daughter be raped.
I think you know what I mean.
Banaz* you mean!
Refresh – there were a couple of hired thugs, but a couple of her cousins were also involved in murdering her. I won’t quibble about who exactly was responsible for the rape, though. In my eyes, all of them are, since they inflicted it, or allowed it to happen.
Amrit, I wasn’t aware. Thanks.
Which then also makes it a complete mockery of the father’s concept of family honour, however brutish it may have been.
You would have thought these cousins and thugs would therefore not have found any safety in Kurdistan.
Didn’t I post this a couple of weeks ago?
Sunny: Impossible, the suspect was only extradited this week.
Refresh: The uncle was considered the prime mover by the court and has therefore received the longest sentence. The media focused rather exclusively on the father, but I believe there were actually some indications of reluctance on his part.
No-one has actually been charged with rape so far as I know: this crime has been inferred from recording Mohamad Hama’s conversations while he was in remand, although we have been told that the suspects in Kurdistan bragged about it.