The sister of an ‘honour killing’ victim who was brutally murdered on the orders of her family says she lives in fear of the day her father and uncle are released from prison.
Banaz Mahmod’s body was found in a suitcase buried six feet deep in a Birmingham garden after she ‘brought shame’ on her family by fleeing an abusive arranged marriage and falling in love with another man.
Her father Mahmod Babakir Mahmod, 58, uncle Ari Mahmod, 57, and cousins Mohammed Saleh Ali and Omar Hussain were jailed for life after being found guilty of murder, while cousin Dana Amin went to prison for eight years for helping to dispose of her body.
Her sister Bekhal Mahmod has been living under police witness protection for more than 13 years after becoming the first known female in British legal history to give evidence against family members in an honour killing trial.
Speaking to MailOnline after her family’s story appeared in ITV series Honour, Bekhal has claimed her life will ‘always be at risk’, saying she lives ‘always looking over my shoulder’.
She said: ‘I am petrified of the years flying by, and the day they are released from prison. If I had the option I’d give them another 23 years.
’There are some people in my community who still want me dead because they believe the reputation of Kurdish people has been tarnished because of what happened. Sometimes I imagine seeing my mother again, and how she might hug and kiss me. Yet I can never forget how she stood by my father and supported him.’
The Mahmod family lived in Iraq but was forced to seek asylum in the UK in 1995 as the country was thrashed by Saddam Hussein’s regime.
They started a new life in Mitcham, south London but Bekhal’s father soon started to beat her for becoming ‘too Westernised’.
The teenager fled the family home in 2002 and spent time in foster care, while younger sister Banaz, 16, was forced into marrying a grocery shop worker who was 11 years her senior, ‘illiterate’ and ‘old-fashioned’.
Desperate Banaz begged for police help numerous times during the relationship but she was not offered a safe place or ‘any support or reassurance’.
After two years of marriage, she left her husband and returned to the family home but sparked her father’s anger by falling for Rahmat Sulemani.
Banaz, 20, was subjected to more than two hours of rape and torture before she was strangled with a ligature on January 24, 2006.
Rahmat took his own life a decade later after telling the murder trial his ‘life went away when Banaz died’.
Bekhal – who testified against her father in court, despite threats from the Kurdish community – has revealed she still has ‘terrible nightmares’ about Banaz’s murder which ‘get worse’ over time.
She said: ‘The murder of Banaz is like a wound that never heals. She’s on my mind every day. She is never forgotten.’
The estranged young woman, who is living under a new identity said she misses her family ‘so much’ but can’t contact them as it would ‘put them in danger’.
She dreads anyone asking about her family or where she is from and walks the other way if she hears someone speaking her native language.
Figures have revealed there are still an estimated 12 honour killings a year in the UK, while roughly 5,000 cases of honour violence were reported to police in 2016.
Bekhal believes more needs to be done to make officers prioritise victims of honour-based violence, forced marriage and female genital mutilation.
She said: ‘No one can bring my sister back, she is irreplaceable, but I don’t want her death to have been in vain. Now I just fear for the future and for all those girls in situations like hers.’
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