‘Honour killings? It should be called the devil’s work’: Bekhal Mahmod on the murder of her sister

After Banaz Mahmod was killed by her father, uncle and three other men in 2006, it was her sister’s testimony that helped bring them to justice. Before the release of her memoir she tells of her rage at what happened and why she is still living in hiding

Bekhal Mahmod, like an avenging angel, doesn’t forgive. To do so would be to betray her younger sister, Banaz. She has watched the film Law Abiding Citizen, in which Gerard Butler takes brutal revenge on the men who murdered his wife and daughter, 50 times. She fantasises about hurting those who murdered her sister in the same way they hurt Banaz. She wishes they would die in jail and their ashes would be flushed down a sewer. She hopes that the people who covered up Banaz’s murder will never see the light of heaven.

She has a long list of people she hates. Her father, Mahmod Mahmod, who arranged the murder of her beloved Banaz in an “honour” killing. Her uncle Ari Mahmod, who pressed Mahmod to have Banaz killed and fixed the murder. Mohammed Saleh Ali, Omar Hussain and Mohamad Hama, who spent hours torturing and raping 20-year-old Banaz, before strangling her to death on 24 January 2006. The south London Kurdish community, who blocked and resisted the Metropolitan police’s investigation into Banaz’s killing with its omertà.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/YLS43C8