Police Sickened To See What Family Did To Daughter Over Simple Kiss

A Kurdish woman living in London was raped and murdered after she was spotted innocently kissing a man outside a subway station by a family member.

Banaz Mahmod was tortured to death by her father, uncle and cousins in 2006 after it was discovered she had chosen a boyfriend after divorcing the man the family had chosen for her, according to the Mirror.

Mahmod divorced her arranged marriage husband and secretly chose her own partner. Her family members said she had “shamed” them by doing so. One family member spotted the 20-year-old kissing her boyfriend, Iranian Rahmat Sulemani, at a south London subway station. The young woman’s family then made plans to kill the secretive couple, and Mahmod knew of the plot.

Crime writer Mark Billingham was so affected by the case that it inspired a novel entitled “Love Like Blood.”

“What must it have been like for her getting up every morning, going downstairs and not knowing what was going to happen that day?” Billingham said. “She was living every minute, of every hour of every day in absolute terror.”

Mahmod’s family discovered the secret relationship following her divorce from her arranged marriage husband. She and Sulemani constantly texted each other, always waiting for the next time they could meet in person.

“They worshipped one another and they tried to keep apart,” Billingham said. “They knew the trouble they were going to get in but they couldn’t be without one another so they would meet secretly.”

The meeting at the subway station was the catalyst for a chain of events that led to her murder. She eventually discovered she was being followed by members of her family. She already knew they wanted her dead.

The 20-year-old wrote a letter to police telling them what she had discovered. Unfortunately, it was too late.

Five members of Mahmod’s family were convicted of her murder and sentenced to a total of 100 years in prison.

According to the Evening Standard, Banaz was raped, tortured and strangled with a plastic cord for more than two hours in a brutal “honor killing.” Her body was stuffed into a suitcase and buried several feet underground. The suitcase was found three months later.

Police say that while five family members were directly involved in the murder, more than 50 people were involved in the case — some helped cover up the murder while others lied for the family members arrested for the young woman’s murder.

Sulemani had to assume a secret identity following the murder and lived under police protection. He revealed in an interview years later that there was “no life” for him after the death of Banaz. Ten years after her murder, he hanged himself.

“It is desperately sad,” Billingham said. “You go back to the two of them meeting outside that tube station, having that kiss, and 10 years later they are both dead.”

Sources: Mirror, Evening Standard / Featured Image: Pixabay / Embedded Images: MSM via Mirror