Lost to Honour: The Tragic Death of Banaz Mahmod

In this episode of Sinister South, we dive into the deeply tragic case of Banaz Mahmood, a young Kurdish woman from South London whose life was taken in a devastating honour killing. After enduring years of abuse in a forced marriage, Banaz sought help from the police five times, only to be tragically failed by the very system meant to protect her. We unpack the cultural pressures behind honour-based violence, Banaz's immense courage in seeking freedom, and the chilling systemic failures that led to her untimely death.

Of course, before the heavy stuff, we chat about Hannah’s recent bath-time self-care obsession and Rachel’s ongoing DIY home improvement saga—because balance is key, right?

Trigger warnings: this episode covers sensitive and disturbing content, including family betrayal, abuse, and murder. We also take a moment to reflect on the changes inspired by Banaz’s case and the importance of protecting vulnerable women at risk of honour-based violence.

Sources for this case include:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Banaz_Mahmod

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/22/honour-killings-devils-work-bekhal-banaz-mahmod

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11716272

https://www.itv.com/watch/honour/2a7534/2a7534a0001

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/sep/21/uk-policing-why-not-enough-has-changed-since-the-murder-of-banaz-mahmod

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VepuyvhHYdM

https://ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2007/11/kurdsworldwide262.htm

If you or anyone you know is at risk of honour-based violence, these organisations are here to help.

Karma Nirvana
A specialist charity for victims and survivors of honour-based abuse in the UK. They also have a UK Helpline, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm: 0800 5999 247

The Halo project
A national project that supports victims of honour-based violence, forced marriages and FGM by providing advice and support to victims. 

Freedom Charity
Bringing awareness, help and support to victims of forced marriage, honour-based violence and female genital mutilation (FGM).

Refuge
A charity helping victims rebuild their lives and overcome different forms of violence and abuse. They also have a 24-hour helpline:

Thanks for tuning in! If you loved diving into the dark corners of South London with us, don't forget to hit that subscribe button to never miss an episode of "Sinister South."

Also, follow us on Instagram @SinisterSouthPodcast for sneak peeks, behind-the-scenes content, and more cheeky banter, or www.sinistersouthpod.co.uk. Remember, every crime tells a story... and South is the best side of the river...

Produced and hosted by Hannah Williams & Rachel Baines
Mixed & edited by Purple Waves Sound (A.K.A Will)

Transcript

Banaz Mahmood

Hello. Hi, I'm Rachel. I'm Hannah and this is Sinister South, a podcast all about the underbelly of South London.

Oh, I like it. I'm trying to make it more succinct and also we've really overused nefarious. We have.

Although it's right. And it's also a very good word. It's a great word.

I just like saying it. But yeah, I always try and like think of words that I can add to it. So you're trying to make it succinct and I'm trying to make it elongated.

Is this not the story of our lives? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. We're both quite verbose people.

We are, but there's, there's nothing wrong with verbosity. I get really annoyed when people say that, like, oh, what was the point in learning all the words if you don't use them all? Thank you. And also people be scoffing at my 40.

People be scoffing. People be scoffing. That's the spin off from people know nothing.

Yeah. People be scoffing. No, people just do nothing.

What's it called? I've never seen it. I don't mean either. People just do nothing.

Let's definitely talk about it then because we know so much about it. But it sounds like a spin off. People be scoffing.

But people be scoffing at my like, you know, long reports and stuff. Right. There are times when like one must tell the entire story and not a cribbed version.

I agree. I'm here for it. Babes were made for anyway.

How are you doing? I'm good, babe. I'm good. I'm having a sedate and calm week considering the weekend was quite raucous.

We had my little brother throws, I don't know what to call it, a day festival. Yeah, I think that is what it is. And it was last Saturday and it was very good fun.

Nice. But yeah, I think Richard and I left at like 5am to go home. We're like, right, that's enough now.

What time does it go on till? I don't know what time they stopped this year. I don't. Yeah, I don't know.

But yeah, it's really good. It's really. It was nice to see.

Also, like, because they're all that. Not necessarily DJs. Yeah.

But they DJ part time. Yeah. Or some of them do DJ full time as well, which is fabulous.

But like music production and DJing is like 99% not all of their jobs. And just how much they've improved on last year as well. Oh, I mean, they were still fabulous last year.

Yeah. But and also the organisation of it, I thought was really good. Do you know, that's what we call growth.

There we go. I'm all about growth. So yeah, I'm having a very like a bath, a face mask, a hair mask kind of Do you know what that sounds like? Bliss, drinking some water, taking an ungodly amount of supplements to see if they will reverse the internal damage I've done.

I mean, I did that when I had my mental breakdown last week. Oh, yeah. Not this week's one.

This one I've just left to go under the radar is fine. But last week's one, I suddenly was like, right, I now must make up for all of the shit things in my life with hair, care, skincare. I've got found some of my multivitamins, thought I'd take some of them again.

This will undo everything. Every nasty word I've said to myself will magically disappear. Now I've taken a vitamin D tablet.

Exactly. Exactly. I've taken a vitamin D tablet.

I've like put some cream on my feet for whatever reason. And I've put a sheet mask on. There we go.

It's all good. In actual fact, what I should just do is, I don't know, take my fucking medication. Uh, maybe maybe that would be helpful.

Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Sertraline. Anyway, how are you other than mental breakdown? Oh, fine.

And to be fair, like, you know, I'm massively overreacting this mental breakdown pudding. I was gonna say it's bored now. Yeah, I mean, it's it's just, it's just a continual low level anxiety.

That's a disorder for you babes. I know. It's fun.

It rears its ugly head every now and then. But no, I'm all good. I'm all good.

I'm looking to. Well, basically, what's happened is I have finished a project, ie the garden was finished. Yes, it's great.

It does look lovely. I'm very, I'm very impressed with it. But obviously now can't use it.

Because whether being sure because it's too nice. Oh, no. Well, there is also that I kept saying to the kids when like the grass had like grown properly.

It was just like, okay, so so the grass just you can run on it. But it's not just just maybe like tiptoe. We're fairies.

We're ballerinas. And then my youngest is just doing her hippos from Fantasia impression. But no, but now I've decided I want to do my bathroom.

Okay, yeah. Because, again, women of the people this is so boring. But because of all my shit with my mortgage, and I can't take money out.

I can't do my not the extension. I can't do my lovely kitchen extension. So instead, I'm going to rip out the bathroom instead.

Fair. Because what else? It was always on the cards. It was.

Oh, yeah, it was. Good for you. Yeah, my husband.

Thank you. My poor husband just not with any heavy lifting. Sorry.

More like in the Pinterest board. Mate, like, this is totally gonna be one of those situations. Oh, wow.

Oh, no. Hang on. I was misconstrued.

I am fully understanding that it is Pinterest only and potentially some light retail therapy. Yes. Oh, of course.

Yeah, that's all good. But yeah, my poor husband because he's just like, oh, okay. Like the last the last health crisis we had.

We've now got lovely grass. This one. We're gonna have Hey, at least you're productive with it.

Exactly. Right? We'll go to bed. You do home improvement.

I do home improvement can't keep the fucking house tidy. But I will rip it apart. So we need more disruption, more stuff and chaos.

We need just just to be a little more frantic. I find washing too easy at the moment. Having this mental breakdown.

All I seem to want to care for myself with is bath products. Yeah. I'm gonna rip the bathroom out.

Because obviously, I am too self indulgent. Yeah. Oh, it's almost like you know me burn it.

Yeah, basically. But no, otherwise, you can come and shower at mine, but you're not using any of my expensive products. Oh, that's fine.

Because I don't know what to do with them. Anyway. Like, my my equivalent of an expensive product is something that I have been given in some sort of gift set that I would be unlikely to buy for myself.

I am. I went to the Richard leaves work for get up. And I went into the bathroom the other day, and there was a facial exfoliating, like a tube of facial exfoliator on the side of the shower, right? They had obviously used Oh, oh, oh, my.

But it's me, right? Yeah. Queen of petty. Yeah, yeah.

It's my favourite thing about you. At the time of recording, right? I haven't done anything about it yet. Oh, I can't think of a of a punishment suitable enough.

Oh, oh, God. So the petty and me is really like, okay, we're gonna ramp this up. This is gonna be this is gonna be a big bang.

Yeah, this is gonna be like Matilda putting superglue on her dad's hat. If he had any hair, that'd be really funny. Yeah.

Oh, my God. I'm so here for this. You just don't do not do anything without letting me know first.

All right, because I need to be fully invested. It was 24 pounds on its own. Oh, and it's part of a regime.

I have to upkeep to look mediocre at best. So I need you all heard how I was with the diet cokes. I know.

And diet cokes are not 24 pounds. No. Oh, just letting you all know that that's that'll be upcoming in a certain episode when you ask me how I am.

I'm recording live from prison. I was gonna say so episode 45 will be and today we're doing so we're just outside the old Bailey for Hannah's trial. How are you feeling? vindicated? Worth it.

See my skin glowing. See his gray doll. I'm gonna get a lapel mic just for this situation.

Good. Will's there with a boom? Yeah, absolutely terrified. Oh, dear.

No. Well, I think at the moment he will do whatever you want. Because you made your demands of me in the shed when he managed to fix.

I was so happy. We recorded another episode before we did this one. And the stupid laptop.

We were basically at the end, doing our elongated long goodbyes, as we always do. And it suddenly went, Oh, I need to update now. Boom, gone, everything gone.

But we'll somehow magically managed to save it. So So yeah, I did the only reasonable thing. And ruined my weekend and offered you up on a plate to him.

I said, anything the man requests, you must do. It's only fair. Trevor's that is the kind of dedication I have.

After this weekend, we'll see how dedicated Rachel really is. The funny thing is that in his mind, he's like, Oh, oh, in reality, what he really wants is for me to leave him the fuck alone. Get a burger.

Can I get a burger? Can I please put my headphones on and play some destiny with my friends in America? And maybe then maybe could you play a game of Magic the Gathering with me, even though you have no fucking idea how to play it. And then I can just continuously win all the time. That's what that's what you've got to do.

Oh, to be honest, my husband is a geek, but he doesn't sound that ridiculous. Oh, dear. Anyway, after all that gaiety, I've got a horrible story to tell you.

Yeah, I'm scared about this one. Yeah, it's not. It's not nice.

No, not nice. I'm kind of taking over the mantle again. Yeah, should I just get into it? I think so, babes.

I think so. I think that's going to be the best thing to do really. We'll rip the bandaid off a bit.

So today I am telling the story of Banaz Mahmood and trigger warnings all over the place for this one. It is bloody horrible. And I'm not going to list out all the things that it is.

It's just all the bad things. Ah, so bad. I've managed to migrate my microphone away from my mouth while I moved my laptop.

But no, it is. Think of all the bad things that can happen. It's got all of them.

So we're going to be talking about Banaz and this is an honour killing or an honour based killing as it's called. And I just want to say off the top and I know that like, I try and be careful with this because I don't want to be overly apologetic for things. But at the same time, I really don't want to offend anyone with anything I say.

And so I want to make it clear that none of if there is any offence taken, it's not given in a malicious way. But basically, like, I'm, I'm not a member of the culture that we're going to be talking about. And so, like, to be fair, neither of us are.

Yeah. And we can, it's a bit like the Adam one, right? Exactly. We're not tarring everybody with the same brush.

We're not saying that because this happened, get there for anyone that is in this culture. Yeah. That feels the same or would do the same or anything like anything of the sort.

Exactly. And that is yeah. So it's kind of like, yeah, one apologise in advance if my understanding or my interpretation of anything is kind of off.

And two for any mispronunciations, because that one is a big risk in this episode. I'm doing my best. But yeah, sometimes human.

Exactly. Anyway, so some of you may be familiar with this case is notorious, but it was also there was a drama, a dramatisation made of this case that was on ITV first released in 2020. But more recently, it's been re released on Netflix.

And it's called honour. And it means that the case has kind of been in sort of public consciousness a little bit more recently. And I actually think that Netflix has hacked my computer.

We think about skies. Yeah. Yeah, basically, like you hear nothing of these cases, nothing's going on, we decide we're going to write about them and do a case about them.

And suddenly they're everywhere. But yes, so while I was researching it, it was released on Netflix. And I just wanted to put it out there that I haven't just covered it because it's now popular.

Anyway, so so yeah, this case looks into so called honour killings. And the aim of kind of covering this case is to try and get a little bit of a look behind what that actually means. And as part of it, we also get to journey through yet more police failings.

And yeah, just generally horrific male violence towards women. So all the good things. Yeah, but like it's so this case and the case of Shafili Ahmed, who is I think that was up in Yorkshire or somewhere, somewhere up north.

Like these two cases have been like notorious in their brutality, but also kind of like have played a pivotal role in sort of changing the narrative on how the media reports on honour killings, how they're viewed. There's been loads of like, as I say, there's a drama that's that's on Netflix now honour. But there's so many documentaries and things about honour based killing now and and part of it was because of these two cases and and and what happened.

And actually for the to kind of recognise that there is like, again, I don't know if legislation has been made because of these cases, but there's definitely been more of a focus on protecting those who are at risk because of these cases. So without further ado, I'm going to jump in. Who was Banaz? She was a 20 year old Sunni Muslim from Iraqi Kurdistan.

And she was living in Mitcham in southwest London. She was born into a strictly traditional Iraqi Kurdish family who were from the rural Mirordale tribal area of Kala Diza. I think those pronunciations are correct.

I'm not sure. But in 1995, Banaz and her family moved from Iraq to London, and they were fleeing Saddam Hussein's regime. And Banaz was 10 years old at the time and entered like an entirely different world to the one that she'd left.

And I think that that is possibly one of the biggest understatements I'm going to make in this entire episode. That is quite the difference. Yeah, yeah.

So just to give you a bit of context about the Mahmood family. So Banaz was one of seven children. And her parents were Mahmood, Babakir Mahmood, who was her father, and Baya Mahmood was her mother.

And of the children, there were six girls, including Banaz. I also, I can't tell if it's Banaz or Banaz. I've heard it pronounced both ways.

So I apologise. I think I've heard Banaz the most. Yeah.

I think I'll probably stick with that. But just if you hear it switch, I apologise. But yeah, so Banaz was in the middle of those six girls.

Bekhal was the eldest and Paisy was the youngest. I don't know the other children's names. And then her brother, who I'll mention a bit later on.

But just as a bit of context, Bekhal and Paisy are two sisters who have been incredibly outspoken about what happened to Banaz, what happened to them. And they are very much in, I wouldn't say their limelight with it, because it's but they're very passionate about making sure that like this doesn't happen to other families. Yeah, it doesn't get forgotten about.

Exactly. So we'll hear a lot about Bekhal in this episode as well, because she has been incredibly open about what happened to her and what was in her family. So it's not to take anything away from Banaz.

But obviously, she's... I think it's like, we have, or there is a tendency generally to try and brush under the carpet anything that is too horrific. Hence why podcasts like this exist. Yeah, exactly.

Like, why the whole genre of true crime kind of exists. Yeah. But also people are very quick to try and move on or ignore or, yeah, again, brush under the carpet that which they don't understand.

Yeah, exactly. So cultural differences in that respect as well. Yeah.

And it's fascinating because like, so yeah, while Bekhal and Paisy and I talk a bit more about them in a minute, and I'll explain why they do what they do, obviously. But so Bekhal is the eldest daughter, and she, whenever you see her being interviewed, or like anyway, she's always wearing a full niqab. And she has been open about saying that that's not because she wants to.

She is wearing the niqab because she is terrified for her own safety. So she is using anonymity. Yeah, so it's basically for her own, like, an attempt to kind of keep her identity protected.

But then Paisy, the youngest, she has spoken out without any form of covering since the prosecution of this case. And she's been on like BBC News and stuff like that, talking about it. But yeah, so in her memoir, which is called No Safe Place, Bekhal Mahmood recalls a history of repeated abuse from her parents, particularly from her father, because she was seen as a in quotation marks troublemaker.

So she was seen to be quite a rebellious child. She refused to accept the restrictions that were put on her in order to control her, especially when they arrived in the UK. Yeah.

So she says that she was first beaten when she was only six, for innocently, this is what she says, quote, innocently touching her much older male cousins, odd looking fingernails. Oh, yeah. And so she was she was beaten for this.

And basically, she was like, she was just confused and frightened of her parents. Exactly. She doesn't know what she's done.

She doesn't understand even if it is like a cultural thing. She didn't understand it. But yeah, so so this was kind of the world that she and her siblings were living in.

Both her both their father and mother subjected their children to a really strict code, which would result in savage beatings if they were broken. And they could be broken by doing really innocuous things. So as we've just said, touching someone's fingernails, but also like petting a dog, looking at a man on the street, wearing makeup or nail polish, plucking their eyebrows or shaving their legs.

And she says Bekhal says that her parents favourite insult while she was still a child was a Gepik, which is, I think that's how you pronounce it. But apparently is I don't know if it's Arabic or their native language in Kurdistan, but it means whore. And then this is a quote from Bekhal.

So there were no explanations about why I was being beaten until after the beating. No one tells you what is right and wrong. I had to learn the hard way.

And even then I could not agree with my parents about what was right and wrong. I thought their so called honour was just dishonour and disloyalty. How can you betray your own children by abusing and killing them? Yeah.

That is tough. It is tough. And I'm gonna say this is the point where maybe we buckle in.

So yeah, it was about the age of eight that Bekhal realised that she was seen as a troublemaker. And she was. And this was because she was subjected to female genital mutilation at the hands of her and I quote, nearly blind grandmother, who decided to perform the procedure herself rather than the local woman who was experienced in the process.

And like I've written down what happened and I'm still even in this moment, not entirely certain I'm going to read it verbatim because it is it's just I mean, it's nightmare fuel. But essentially, the procedure did not go well at all. And basically the grandmother, because maybe because she's not trained, and she's also can't see, yeah, basically hurt Bekhal incredibly badly.

And then basically just threw hot oil on her to cauterise the wound. And she nearly died. Oh, my.

Yeah. Fucking hell. And then the worst part of it is that she recounts, I always think maybe she did it deliberately.

Because I was known as a troublemaker. She looks at me like a cat hisses at a dog. I remember lying on the floor looking around me thinking all you adults are not one of you will say this is wrong.

This kid was eight. That is so, so intense. It is dark.

It's, it's horrible. It's horrible. Wow.

Yeah. So this was this happened when they were in Iraq, they came to the UK. And I think that Bekhal was one of the I could be wrong, but I'm pretty certain that Bekhal was one of the only children who went through that process.

The other children, I think mainly because of the fact that they were in the UK, when they were at an age where it could have been done. It's obviously a lot harder to have that procedure and get away with. Exactly.

So Bekhal had it performed on her, but I'm not certain that the other girls did. Which doesn't make it any better. But you know, yeah, like blessings.

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so Bekhal, basically, we're saying that like, so there's a really good documentary, and I'll put it in the show notes, along with all the other sources, as per usual. But there's a really good documentary, if you can stomach watching it, I would I would recommend you watch it.

Bekhal is incredibly brave in it. But in this documentary, she talks about the fact that she wasn't allowed to have her nails long, she wasn't allowed to pluck her eyebrows, she wasn't allowed to wear perfume. And she would be regularly beaten by her father who just wanted to control her basically.

And he was planning a forced marriage to her much older cousin. And he wanted to send her back to Iraqi Kurdistan when she was 15. Right.

So she left home trying to escape what was going on. And she did it numerous times. Because she kept returning.

Yeah. And like, mainly she was saying like a child, of course, she is like, what do you do? You go to the people that are supposed to love and protect you. And if that's what you've known, your whole life, it's kind of difficult to know that actually, that's, I think she did know that that's not right, right.

But also, where are you going to run away and come back like that? Yeah, where are you gonna go kid? That's exactly. But yeah, so the first time she ran away from home, she came back because there were threats on her life from her father. So she returned, essentially out of fear.

And then while she was still at school, she attempted to take her own life. It didn't work. But her parents refused to collect her from the hospital.

Oh, for fuck's sake. The second time she tried to escape, she was placed in foster care. I was gonna say, where is social services? Yeah, they do.

They do come they do come into it. And like, we'll get a school aged kid that's attempted to take their own life. Yeah.

Like, yeah, yeah, it just you would assume that there was some sort of safeguarding. Yeah. Yeah.

But, but yeah, so she was she was placed in foster care. But she returned home again, after the social worker passed on a tape recording from her parents, where her father threatened to kill the whole family. Oh, yeah.

Right. Yeah. Okay.

Wow. Yeah. Yep, yep.

I have nothing other than so we're very glad that social services got involved. Great. Obviously, not all social workers.

But she finally managed to escape this horrific life with her parents when she was 16. But bit of cultural context around this. So a daughter leaving home voluntarily, or kind of like out of their own fruition and not due to marriage was seen as incredibly shameful.

Yeah. And Nazir Afzal from the Crown Prosecution Service. So he's also in the documentary.

He stated that, and I quote, it's about your reputation. It's literally about your face, how you are perceived by others. And then Joanne Payton, who is from the international campaign against honor killings, said that if in, particularly in this kind of like Iraqi Kurdish culture, and community, if there is a woman who doesn't conform, then that's going to have an impact upon the whole family.

Because sorry, because the behavior doesn't reflect upon themselves, but upon everybody around them. Right. And it's almost like it can spread.

So like the shame, or radiates out, so it will kind of like infect people around you, if you know, and eventually, so it will kind of it becomes the collective. So it's not just the individual, it becomes the family, the family becomes the extended family that becomes the community. And essentially, the community can't have that, right? Is the kind of ethos of it.

So in 2002, Bekal agreed to meet up with her brother Barman. And she'd stayed in contact with him since leaving, like she stayed in contact with her siblings as well as her sisters, it was the parents that she was leaving. And he met her in a remote location, where he then proceeded to attack her with a dumbbell.

Fuck. Yeah. So he whacked her over the head with a dumbbell.

And then he tried to strangle her. But she bit like the crook of his arm. Oh my god.

And he let go. And then apparently, like she screamed at him, like, what are you doing? Look at what you're doing. And he then stopped, burst into tears, and said that he had been told he had to do it because he was the big man in the family.

And he admitted that their father had paid him to kill her and make their shame go away. Yeah, the trauma of it all. I know for everyone.

I know. Fucking hell. It's mad.

It's just, yeah. So Bekal reported the assault to the police, but she didn't press charges. Exactly.

It's what can anyone's gonna relate to the pressure of the family? Yeah. She's gonna understand, isn't she? It's the others that are in it with you. And yeah, and when she asked, because she'd she'd been she left home, but because she was still 16, she's a minor.

So she's still under the care of, like, the social services or, you know, other sort of services within the community. She asked if she could move out of the area and away from members of South London's Kurdish community, because she said that they were stalking her and reporting her movements back to her father. But social services did nothing.

Oh, fuck's sake. And it would have been such an easy. Well, not I know, it's not such an easy thing.

And I know there's not a bottomless pit of money. And there's not resource enough to go around at all. But there's a very real and clear threat.

Yeah, there is. Like, what more? What more would she have had to do or prove or what would have happened? What would have happened? Yeah, sure. Yeah.

It's, it's, yeah, it's disgusting. So yeah, so Mahmood Babakir, so her father, it was kind of like, it was seen within the community that his failure to control his eldest daughter was seen as a weakness in him personally. And he was then subjected to like a degree of ostracism from the community, because as I say, it radiates out.

So and one of the ways to look at this, right, is that, and part of the reason why I think this is so difficult for me to wrap my head around for most people to wrap their head around, like the UK and most Western countries, right? We are individual, like, we are individualistical societies. That's not a word. We're individualistic as a society.

So it's about the self and you have control over your own. So you're shunned. Yeah, exactly.

But you also but you also have autonomy over your own being. But the, the Mahmoods came from a country and a culture where the family name was like, the most important thing. And it was essentially like, like a brand name.

So if you if you think about, I don't know, there's a big, the only big brand I can think of right now is McDonald's. But like, you know, but if you think that like, one franchise does not the name make. Exactly.

But if one franchise did do something, they had a massive load of illness and food poisoning, it's going to tarnish McDonald's as a whole, rather than that one branch over there. And that's essentially how this is seen within this culture. So your surname is your brand.

And if somebody does anything to kind of damage that brand reputation, then you're kind of seen within that community as you're all as bad as each other, essentially. Very simplistic way of putting it. And I'm sure there's nuance.

But you know, and this, this ostracism for the family, like why this was so important. It wasn't just about sort of this idea of shame, or kind of just being seen as weak or any of that. But it it could actually end up with the whole family being tarnished, which could mean that they were unable to actually exist within like the economic setup of the community.

So they wouldn't be able to kind of like potentially, they wouldn't be able to trade or shop, they might be rejected, where one of them stepped out of line or showed a disrespect to hierarchy. So it had like a, an actual tangible impact. And rightly or wrongly.

And so Mahmood believed that others thought he couldn't control his daughters after Bacow left the family home. And then this threatened his cultural inclusion within the family in a new country, where they like, you know, that they're clinging to to what they recognize. And Bacow's departure also led to some major ramifications for her sisters.

So it led to the child marriages of Banaz and Paisley. So she says, I had left home and because of this shame, that is in commas, my sisters were forced into marriage to save the honor or reputation of the family. Banaz later complained to police that her husband raped and beat her.

He treated her like like his shoe, which is what she told me when I last secretly saw her in 2005. I begged her to come with me, but she loved my mother and did not want to bring shame to the family. How I wish I had taken her with me.

For soon after this meeting, Banaz had finally decided to leave her husband and fallen in love with another man, her prince, but the family did not approve of him. And she was murdered in cold blood to restore their precious so-called family honor. Yeah, so we're gonna we're gonna take a step back a little bit from the horror.

We'll get back to it. Don't worry. But I'm going to tell you a little bit about who Mahmood, Mahmood was, so her father.

And the reason why I thought this was important was because I don't give him any validation to feelings or anything like that. But I think it's important to understand the makeup of this family a bit more. Yeah.

So Mahmood Babakir Mahmood was Banaz, Bakal, Paisy and Barman's father. And he was an ex soldier from the Iraqi army, and an all round nasty piece of work. Yes.

So he was from a family of four brothers who had all migrated to the UK and specifically to South London, because that's where this Kurdish community kind of set up shop, if you like. And they'd all moved with their wives and children, again, because of what was going on in Iraq at the time. So Mahmood was the eldest.

But although he was the eldest, he wasn't seen as like the head of the family. He wasn't the patriarch. And this is quite interesting.

Yeah, it's not it's not what you normally see. But this was because his younger brother, Ari Agha Mahmood, who is an even bigger piece of shit. He was seen as the kind of the patriarch.

And that was because he had he was a very successful businessman. So he had a lot more money, he had a lot more clout, he had a lot more power, and therefore it kind of the head of the family name got passed to him instead of Mahmood. And so he'd been in the UK since the 19 like the early 1990s.

And he Yeah, it was also then when when Mahmood Babakir's issues with the community came up, that was another reason for kind of like Ari being the one that was in charge. So the two brothers, they were both in their 50s. And they they did not like each other.

Oh, really? They had very little time for each other. And Mahmood was like Mahmood Babakir. Sorry, it's getting a bit confusing, because her last name is the same as his first name.

But yeah, so Mahmood Babakir is her father. And he, he suffered not only sort of social isolation from the wider community, but also from his own family. So Ari Agha, the younger brother was seen as arrogant, and was said to, and I quote, lord it over the rest of his family, especially at his home in Mitcham, which was much larger than his brothers.

He had a Lexus on the drive, and it was said he would sit in the middle of the sofa with his arms outstretched, the king overseeing his domain, while everyone else would arrange themselves humbly around him. Yeah, he owned a supermarket on the Wandsworth Road. He had rental properties, a banking business that moved money between Kurdistan and the UK.

And it's alleged that he was also involved in arranging visas and falsifying details for illegal immigration into the country. But that was only cited in a couple of sources that I found. So we might want to take that with a pinch of salt.

Allegedly. Allegedly. There you go, that'll do.

So what happened to Banaz? Because we've not had enough terror already. We've not even got into the incidents that we're talking about. So, and I do, honestly, this is another one where I'm like, if you want to skip this, that's fine.

No one is going to judge you. So in 2003, at the age of 17, Banaz was married to a man she had met once, who was 10 years her senior, who was illiterate and strongly linked to her Kurdish family. But he had just arrived in the UK from Iraq.

And she was moved into her husband's home in Coventry. Bloody hell. So she's not only with a man who's a lot older than her, who she's essentially having to kind of act as his, like she speaks English.

Yeah, exactly. So like, she can do all of that for him. She's then taken out of the only kind of community she does know in the country and moved to a different part.

So she's now in Coventry. After two years, Banaz left her husband and returned to the family home in London. In 2005, she went to Croydon police station to make a report about the way her husband had been treating her.

As the maltreatment had happened in Coventry, she was interviewed by detectives from West Midlands police. And in this she complained that her husband was very, very strict, treated her like property. She said that he had raped her multiple times, he would beat her if she resisted and told her he would kill her if she told anyone about what had happened.

And she told police that she wasn't aware whether this behaviour was normal in her culture. Or in the UK, because she was 17. Of course, I forgot she was so young.

Yeah, so she didn't, she didn't know she'd never had any other form of relationship. And this is why she said it took her so long to report the abuse. I also reckon it's because she's fucking terrified.

And again, there are the her reporting this to the police. It has been videotaped, and it is widely available. And I would suggest anyone go and watch it.

Because although the subject matter is horrific, this woman is so brave. She's so eloquent in what she's saying. She is.

She's just give her voice the air it deserves. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, time.

Not just not just the air time. Yeah. Her husband, who I'd have put in brackets here piece of shit called Ali.

Don't know if I can't find his first like his full name is just known as Ali. And he told her to tell people that she'd fallen in the bathroom if anyone saw her bruises. And he made her believe that her family loved him more than her so he could do with her as he liked.

And one of the examples she gives the police when she's speaking to them is that she called him by his name in front of guests, which apparently is not allowed traditionally in her culture. And he threatened to stop her. Okay.

So, you know, I know. And then so she like, and again, I just, I just keep thinking how brave this woman is. Because like, even after that, she just goes like, she says to the police, like, I just said to him, but we're in Britain.

It's not Iraq. And it's just a name. Like, what's the problem? But he obviously didn't care.

But now as describes in her police interview, how she wrote down the beating she received in a diary along with pictures of her injuries, but that her husband had found them and destroyed them. And she says that one of her beatings was so bad that she was bleeding from her lips and her ears and her wrist was broken. Oh my god, she says that this beating in particular really affected her and that and she cannot, and I quote, remember things well anymore.

And most of the time when I'm cleaning my ear, it bleeds. Yeah. She recounts again, like go and watch it.

Yeah, because she's not only is she brave, but she is so dignified in how she's speaking. Like she's not emotional. She's not.

She has every right to be ranting and raving and screaming and shouting. 100%. But she is so calm.

She is very put together with it. She is telling them the facts, trying to get this across to them. And I just I just think she's phenomenal for what she tried to do, even if fuck all was done about it.

So eventually, one of her sisters found out about the abuse, and I couldn't find out which one. But an alley was confronted by the family. Okay, which surprised me.

Yeah. Until he admitted to the beatings and rape, but because it said it was because she was a bad wife, and her family found this rationale acceptable, for fuck's sake. And they told her to go back to her and become a better wife.

Brilliant. Yeah. Okay, wonderful.

So bananas. Again, as I say, this woman is incredibly brave, like she left her abusive dickhead husband multiple times, but she wasn't allowed to stay at home. She claims she was brainwashed into thinking that she would bring shame on the family if she divorced him.

She finally demanded a divorce on the phone to her mum after he called her skinny and ugly and a whore. And she says that she was angry and shouting down the phone, she packed some personal things and she just walked out. And but like, you don't just leave the husband in this in the culture in the world that she was in.

And her husband was held in really high regard by her family and he was seen to be like a really good man by her father. Don't ask. And after leaving bananas was worried that again, sort of similar to what I mentioned briefly earlier about Bacal.

She was really worried that men were following her in the streets, and that these men were from the Kurdish community, and that they were reporting stuff back to her father. And she told detectives that she recognised one of the man from like weddings that she'd been to. But, and that she'd said, like, she didn't know him, but she'd seen his face.

And she'd seen him numerous times in a car shouting her name in Kurdish, and that this was one of the main reasons she'd gone to police because she was frightened. She chillingly says in the interview, in the future, if anything happens to me, it's them. She then goes on to ask what the police will do now she's given them her statement and is told that they'll follow up with an inquiry, but that they will keep her informed and that she should call them if she's concerned for her safety.

That's what she's doing right now. Yep. That's what she's doing right now.

She's concerned for her safety. That's why she's there. You ready for this bit then? Nope.

However, the officers who took her statement did nothing to investigate her claims or to track her husband down. It took three months for them to write up the statement for her to sign. Are you fucking kidding me? Nope.

Oh right. I know. It's horrific.

It's horrific. Fucking hell. This was one of five occasions where Benaz went to the police over allegations.

Five? Five. Over allegations of threat of harm from her community and her family, but all the signs were ignored. I just can't.

I have no words. I know. There's a little glimmer of light.

So after leaving her husband, because she does leave him. Yeah. She finally found some joy when she met a man named Rahmat Suleiman, or Suleimani, sorry.

Rahmat Suleimani. Originally they were friends and this just developed into a relationship and Benaz called Rahmat, and I quote, her inspiration for getting up every day, and the reason I am living today in text messages. Police said that she contacted Rahmat every day in the morning and in the evening just before bed.

Benaz's sister Bakal said that Rahmat was a lovely guy and that the two had started to plan for their future. They wanted kids and they'd picked out names for these kids and, you know, but they kept their relationship secret for obvious reasons and because of the constant surveillance that they felt on them from men in the community. And two months after Benaz had gone to the police, she and Rahmat were spotted by members of the community outside Morden tube station and they were seen kissing and they reported it to the head of the family, Ari Mahmood, Benaz's uncle, which triggered the abhorrent things I'm about to tell you.

So what I'm going to do, because this is fucking heavy, I'm going to try and whiz through this. Okay. Not because I don't think it deserves time, but because there is a level of, it's disgusting and I don't.

We don't want to be gratuitous for the sake of being gratuitous. Exactly. But I also want to make sure that people know what happened.

It's relevant, but it's, she was more than this. Yeah, exactly. Right.

So following on from the sighting of Benaz and Rahmat, a council of war was set up in the home of Ari Mahmood alongside the other men of the family. Plans were orchestrated by Ari, the uncle, who had told the younger members of the family to kill Benaz. Prosecutor Nazir Afzal likened this to organised crime and a conspiracy of the men in her family to plot her death because she'd fallen in love with a man that they didn't approve of.

Two days after this family meeting, Benaz went to the police and made another statement where she said she had heard her uncle say that she was to be killed. A week after this, she sent a letter to police where she identified five family members who she believed were to take part in her murder. Oh my God, she's telling you.

Yep. Although she said that she didn't want the police to take action. And in the documentary that I watched, I believe the director of the documentary is from a very similar background to Benaz.

And she speaks to a lot of people who are much more in the know than I. And what they were saying is that it's like in any situation of domestic violence, like it's not uncommon for women who are wrapped up in sort of honour-based violence, where like the person at the centre of that abuse, they don't want to get the people that is hurting them into trouble. They just want to be out. They just want to be out.

So a few weeks after she'd sent the letter, she was asked by her father to come to a relative's house for a meeting. And this was on New Year's Eve. She was tricked into going as she was told that they wanted to discuss her divorce.

Oh for fuck's sake. She went and was asked to carry a suitcase into the house for her father. And when inside, Mahmood told Benaz to sit on the sofa, where he then forced her to drink copious amounts of brandy.

And bearing in mind, she's a Sunni Muslim. You know, alcohol consumption isn't something that those people traditionally do. And especially not from this sort of background, you know.

But he was forcing her to drink this. And they believe it's in an attempt to like stupefy her so that she wouldn't, I don't know if it was she wouldn't know what was coming or what, but he tried to force her to drink all this. She's more pliable.

Exactly. He then made her look at the television and told her not to look behind her, which I'm a bit like, you know, that is so dark. It is.

But also, the first thing I'm going to do if someone tells me not to do something is do it. Immediately look. 100%.

Anyway, Benaz, because she is so fucking brave, just refused to do as she was told point blank refused. And she said that she saw her father behind her wearing rubber gloves and trainers and became very painfully aware that he was about to kill her. However, for some reason, her dad leaves the room.

Right. And it gave Benaz enough time to escape through the back of the house. So she said, she's said to have plunged her hands through a neighbour's window, climbed over a fence and up the road with bare feet, bleeding from her hands and wrists before collapsing on the floor of a cafe nearby.

And she was rescued and taken to hospital where staff stated that they had, and I quote, never seen anyone so frightened in their life. Well, like, just what a fucking powerhouse of a woman. Yeah.

Yeah. She I know there's that thing like you, you don't know how strong you are until you're tested in that kind of way. And hopefully, none of us will ever fucking have to know how strong we are.

Yeah. But fucking hell, that's I know, that's, um, I know. She's, she's just, she's incredible.

Absolutely amazing. So the hospital contacted Ramat who came to Benaz's side immediately. And whilst in the hospital, he told Benaz to tell him exactly what had happened.

And he recorded her statement on his phone. Wow. So he's got her on video after this ordeal telling her, like telling him everything that's happened.

But it's in her native language. But she clearly outlines the steps that her dad was taking. Everything that went on.

Yeah, to try and kill him. Can I ask, and I might be either jumping ahead or asking a question you won't know the answer to, which is fine. Do we know why they didn't approve of him other than she was already married? I think I believe, and I haven't written it down, but I do when I was reading, I think it was something he was from the wrong part of the world, or he was he, I believe he was Pakistani.

Right. And they are Iraqi in the culture. It's just not, it's just not culturally appropriate.

I believe, I believe. Okay. Because you think like, if, you know, your definition of success in this is having a daughter who marries a man and is then a good wife and has children.

Yeah. And this is what she wants to do with him. But it's, but he's just the wrong.

He's the wrong, but it's also not who her father told her to marry. Yeah, I get that as well. I just, it's just, I'm trying to find logic in the and there isn't any.

And I think it's just, you know, she defied him by leaving. So no matter what she did, it was going to be wrong. Yes.

So as I say, she, she tells Ramit everything that happens. It's recorded. Again, if you watch the documentary, and it's annoying me that I now can't remember the name of it.

It'll be in the show notes. Don't panic. But you can watch some of the film in the documentary.

So Ramit encourages Banaz to once again, tell a story to the police, which she does. However, and we're not going to like this bit. The female officer she spoke to disbelieved her entirely.

What? Professor, sorry, Prosecutor Bobby Chima, who we have met before in Sinister South. She was the prosecutor in the Sean Corey case against Karanatmani. Yeah, so she's, she's back again, good old Bobby Chima.

And she said that the officer thought it was and I quote, a girl who drank too much, who thought she was going to be in trouble and was therefore making up this story. Fuck off. And this is a female police officer.

Like, fuck off. I'm gonna be this might sound I don't, I don't know, maybe we'll cut it out. Maybe it sounds racist.

I don't know. If she was white. Maybe.

Maybe, like, yeah, maybe really drunk said something like it's highly unlikely in any case, right? I'm not saying that it is. But use your awareness of where you are policing of where you work, of where you live, of where you are, and what's happening. And look at this girl.

Yeah. Look at the fucking state she's in. Yeah, look at the five or however many it was the multiple times she has told the police.

Yeah, her life is in danger. Yeah. The argument is that most of those because it was all related to the West Midlands police wasn't kind of like it wasn't being Oh, fuck off.

I know. I know. And you're right.

Okay. So you're telling me if I went and stole a car in Birmingham, yeah. And then came down here and was in hospital and said something.

They wouldn't be like, Oh, she had a record for this in. Yeah. No, they wouldn't.

They wouldn't just match the fucking dots. And you're ready to be even more even making any sense anymore. match the dots.

I've stolen a car in Birmingham now. I don't know what's going on. I'm so enraged.

Well, I'm this next sentence isn't gonna make it any better. Okay. The police officer also said that she had considered charging bananas with criminal damage for breaking the window of her neighbour during her escape.

If you don't tell me at the end of this that this police officer hasn't been fucking sacked. I don't gonna do a one woman protest. I'm gonna have something changed.

I'm not entirely certain what happened to this police officer. But yeah, it's fucking it's just I'm going that I've said the C word. It's fine.

I just fuck off. Just believe what a woman tells you. Okay.

And even if you even if you've got a niggling doubt, or you don't really believe her in the moment. Wait, yeah. Make us safe.

Yeah. So you know, so you are on your conscience that woman is safe. Yeah.

Then interrogated. Yeah, exactly. Then investigate.

I know. I know. It would have been safer if she had fucking charged her I bet.

Yeah, more than likely because she'd at least be somewhere where she's being looked after. I know. I know.

So Nazir Afzal again, so he again was prosecutor for the CPS. He states that in the bananas case, there was and I quote, a landslide of mistakes flowing from a lack of understanding and a lack of awareness, some poor policing, which we all recognise now. Anyway, after the attack, but now has moved in with Ramat.

But this was brief as the family somehow managed to persuade her to meet them at a McDonald's restaurant. This is why McDonald's was in my head. McDonald's restaurant in tooting to persuade her to come home.

And I suppose, well, sorry. No, it's fine. Meeting in a public place.

Yeah, I can see how they convinced her into that. Yeah. And I guess then it's like, you've picked her off.

Yep. Her safe. You've taken her out of her safe place.

She's on her own. Yeah. You're gonna then she's gonna be more susceptible to being convinced of other stuff.

Yep. So she goes back. She did go home.

Now, DCI Caroline good, who we know that name as well, don't we? I don't. It was familiar, but I couldn't find. So no, no, no, it's fine.

Yeah, it's absolutely fine. Now, we've said a lot of stuff about the place and they've been fucking shit. DCI Carolyn good is a gem.

She is a gooden. Okay. And good woman, Caroline.

Yeah. And she has worked tirelessly to make sure that bananas has justice. She has made it her mission to ensure that bananas is not forgotten.

That what happened to her is well known and spoken about. So that it does not happen to anybody else. And she is a good egg.

We like Carolyn. Is she played by Keely Hawes? Yes. Right.

She is. And again, I don't know if it's Caroline or Carolyn. I heard both in documentaries and on the TV.

It may switch. But we love beautiful woman DCI good is a good egg. There we go.

So anyway, so she said that bananas had made a statement along the lines of if I run away, I'm dead. If I go home, I'm dead. And she believes that she had just a sense of complete and utter futility at the the situation, which is what fueled her decision to go back to the people who had just tried to kill her.

So on the evening of January the 23rd 2006 bananas message drama a message asking him to be careful and explaining that she didn't think she could live a day without him before telling him that she loved him so so much. On the morning of January the 24th 2006 bananas disappeared. She was reported missing by her boyfriend when he did not hear from her.

So the investigation. DCI Caroline good had just started as the head of a Scotland Yard homicide team. And she received a phone call in her first week from a local detective inspector who was concerned about a report that he had received.

So DCI good worked with Detective Sergeant Andy Craig, who was the intelligence sergeant, and Detective Sergeant Stuart Reeves, who was the case officer Stuart Reeves worked at Lewisham, which is just down the road from the sham. So DCI good stated that no one in the Kurdish community provided any helpful information at all. And what they did was just basically encounter a community wide scale attempt to pervert the court just cause of justice.

Over 50 people were said to have been involved to some degree in the disappearance of bananas. So during the investigation, police identified bananas his sister, Becca, who is in like protective Yeah, she's she's finally gotten out and she's she's living somewhere safe. And they visit her to see if she can help them in their inquiries.

And Becca said that she knew in her heart that this was to do with the family members, mainly the men. In early March, Becca was told that she would be the next to be killed, and that people had been able to find her telephone number, and that they now knew where she was. And this resulted in the police moving back out from place to place to try and prevent her from being found.

But again, that movement of the cow was done by DCI good and her team. So the letter that bananas had sent to police in December of 2005, one month before her alleged attempted murder at the hands of her father found its way to DCI good. Okay.

And in the letter, she gives details of people that she has heard were going to be taking like a role in her death. And she explains that she's personally overheard her uncle Ari discussing the people who had agreed to be a part of the murder to both of both bananas and Ramit on the phone with her mom. Fucking brilliant.

We don't get to talk about bananas his mom a lot because not a lot is known about her. She was never charged with anything and she's just disappeared. But I wherever she is, there's hope she's having a really shit time.

Yeah, same. I hope that she can only ever find one sock and none of her Tupperware lids fit forever. Anyway, our level of justice is so different because that's what I wish on Richard right now.

I was trying to find something innocuous because if I go down the road, we said what we actually wanted to say, then we might incriminate ourselves at some point we might we might get it. And those people who think that we're inappropriate would definitely hear some things trying to make me more angry. So from the letter DC I good was able to identify some of the men who were involved in her disappearance.

So she didn't when we say that like she identified them, she didn't give their names. But she spoke about who they were, mainly because it's linked to her family. But their names weren't put down.

But DC I good because she is a fucking legend. She managed to work out three of these people who were well, I'm not even calling people these pieces of shit. So Ammar Hussain, Muhammad Ali, not that one.

Muhammad Hama. And these men were all bananas his cousins. Great.

So Muhammad Hama Hama was arrested first, and he was charged with the murder of bananas, despite there being absolutely zero proof that bananas was actually dead. Okay, but DC I good was not fucking playing around. She was like, no, I don't care.

This is happening. Don't care if there's no body don't care if we don't have a scrap of evidence. We know what's happened to this woman.

And we've essentially let it happen. So now this stops, we just got to fucking do stuff. This stops doing something about this now.

So the police were then because they had arrested and charged, they were then in a bit of a race to kind of find evidence that would put him away. So DC I good stated that a quote, the Mahmood family was showing no interest in this investigation whatsoever. They weren't bringing us up saying have you found my daughter yet? Just no interest.

Even when we were dragging the lake opposite their house, no one came out. No interest whatsoever. It's an absolute outrage that this girl is missing and nobody cares about her.

So DS Craig, who worked with DC I good, stated we always try to solve a murder for the victim's family. In this case, we didn't want to solve it for them. We wanted to solve the murder for bananas.

She didn't have anybody else. So during the investigation into the cousins DC I good saw that there were multiple pings on cell site data showing that the two Mohammed's were traveling back and forth like multiple times between London and Birmingham. Okay.

And Hamas car was a higher car. And the GPS within the higher car meant that there was a record of where it had been. Nice.

So police then used helicopters to surveil where the cars had been. Yeah, so they used helicopters to surveil where the cars have been. And from this intelligence made its way back to DC I good and the team and they could like see all the images and there was this one image of a house that they basically they saw a freezer in the garden and they were basically like that's a grave from aerial footage.

That's it. That's where she is. And then DS Craig and DS Reeves they then drove to Birmingham the same day and in the documentary they talk about the fact that it's just like they just they don't give a shit.

They just whatever speed they're they're gone. They're gone. I don't care.

And they drive to Birmingham the same day they visited this residential garden and it was a garden that was associated with the Mahmood family. Right. I don't know what that association was but someone known to them and they enlisted the help of a forensic archaeologist who was able to look at the ground in the rear garden and immediately saw that there had been a disturbance in the earth.

Wow. Buried six feet down detectives found Bernaz curled in a foetal position stuffed inside the suitcase that her father had made her bring into the house when he tried to kill her. It just is so fucking horrible.

Yeah. So what actually happened to Bernaz? Police were able to piece together evidence to provide the below outline of the horror of Bernaz's last day and I'm not going to dwell on it because it is horrific and actually I want to make sure that we remember Bernaz as being incredibly brave rather than how they left her. Yeah.

But we need to mention it so I'm going to flip through it as quickly and respectfully as possible. Okay. Right.

It's believed that Bernaz was killed on the morning of the 24th of January 2006 the day after she met with her family at the McDonald's in Tooting. The suspects met at Hermas's house and made their way to Bernaz's family home. Her father and mother deliberately were not at home leaving Bernaz alone with only one of her sisters but I don't know which one.

Bernaz would sleep on the living room floor as she didn't have a bedroom in the house. The three men came into the house all three of them beat her raped and sodomized her. They said that they took their time with this torture citing that it took around 30 minutes in total.

Then they strangled Bernaz with a cord while one of the cousins put his foot on her back and another held his foot on her neck. Bernaz was said to be terrified and vomited. Hammer then said that he pulled on the cord and stomped on her neck.

It took about four to five minutes for Bernaz to die. Hammer said that she didn't make a sound. So the trial.

Police secretly taped Hammer while he was boasting about what he had done to Bernaz and laughing and celebrating with each other about how manly they had been. There's a special place in hell. It's not even hell the devil's kicking them out.

Yeah. You don't want them. It's a special type of fucking yeah horror awaiting them.

Yep. So this recording along with the letter that Bernaz had sent the reports she had made to police and testimony from her sister Bacal and her boyfriend Rama helped to get convictions. Her uncle Ari Mahmood and father Mahmood Mahmood were given life sentences for arranging her murder.

Her cousin Mahmood Hammer pleaded guilty and also received a life sentence for her murder in 2007. Two of the cousins Omar Hussain and Muhammad Ali had fled to Iraq. No one had ever been extradited to the UK from Iraq before which we assume meant that they believed they were safe from any repercussions.

But DCI bloody good. Come on. She did not let this stop her fucking legend honestly.

So DCI good DS Reeves. They stated that Bernaz was part of us and that drove us on. The team tried to find a way to get at the two cousins but faced significant challenges.

So Omar Hussain was seen to be almost untouchable particularly in Iraq because his family were very powerful. He was said to be being housed by his brother who was a senior police officer in the country and reports were that he was boasting about what he had done in cafes openly being praised for his actions and he was initially being kept sheltered until he pissed off one of his brothers who then shot him in the leg with an AK-47 and he had to go to hospital where he was subsequently arrested. Good.

Muhammad Ali was arrested by Iraqi police after he was involved in a car crash. So the team DCI good DCS Reeves they traveled to Iraq to try and persuade the courts to extradite the men which took over three years. But eventually they succeeded and both Ali and Hussain were given life sentences in the UK for the death of Bernaz.

So yet again we're telling a story where yes the police come good no pun intended in the end. Thanks in no small part to DCI good who I think we should probably petition to make head of police across everything every head of head of life. Yeah head of head of police life.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the new title.

Yeah I like it fine. So yeah so DCI good and then DS Craig and DS Reeves you know massive shout out to them for the work they did. But there were so many opportunities for police to have acted in order to prevent this.

Yeah. Like so in the four months before her death Bernaz went to police at least five times but nothing was done to help her in any way. After her death the Independent Police Complaints Commission launched an inquiry into police misconduct criticising nine police officers six from the Met and three from the West Midlands for not doing enough to help Bernaz.

The Met then gave the following statement. Here we go. I don't even know if I care.

I know. We have learned a great deal since the Bernaz case. We have developed working arrangements to ensure effective and professional standards of investigation and support.

All London boroughs have a dedicated community safety unit. Awareness training on based violence is also delivered. We are resolute in our determination to keep victims and potential victims safe.

West Midlands police stated that a range of measures have been put in place which include a policy for the investigation of rape and serious sexual assaults. The introduction of specialist teams enhanced training in respect of honour based violence and closer working with the partners and the public. We will continually review policies and procedures to ensure the of victims is paramount.

According to official statistics in 2018 there was one honour killing every four weeks in Britain. Wow. But the CPS admits the real figures are probably much higher.

So Nazir Afzal again he summarised this issue by stating who reports a child missing? The family. And if the family are the reason that the child has gone missing you'll never likely get a report. So we don't have any real idea what we do have is a vast underestimation.

So last bit. Which I've titled do you want some more destruction and horror? Right last bit but again this is important. Yeah of course it's all fucking important.

On March 20th 2016, 10 years after the death of Banaz Mahmood, Rahmat Suleimani, who had been living under witness protection after testifying against her family at their trial, sent a text to his neighbour telling them that he was going to take his own life. Oh no. He did by hanging and he was taken to hospital where he died five days later.

Oh no. Rahmat stated that my life depended on her. She was my present, my future, my hope.

She was the best thing that had ever happened to me. My life went away when Banaz died. There is no life.

The only thing which was keeping me going was the moment to see justice being done for Banaz. And I'm going to end it with a statement that was made by Diana Nami who is the executive director of the Iranian and Kurdish women's rights organisation. And she made this statement on the news of Rahmat's death.

I know how utterly heartbroken he was. I wanted to support him but this was not permitted because he was under witness protection. Rahmat must have felt incredibly isolated in his grief, away from any specialist support.

We must ensure that every person affected by honour killing and honour based violence receives the mental health support they need and we call for an investigation to ensure this is achieved. IKWRO also calls for an investigation into Rahmat's death and more broadly into how witness protection programmes support victims and survivors of honour based violence and honour killing. Every death related to honour, including through suicide, must and can be prevented.

I mean they should all have fucking additional life sentences added on. 100% they should. They should never see the fucking light of day.

God that's just so sad. It is. It is.

Yeah. I drank a lot after I finished this. I don't even know what to say.

Do you know it's bad when I can't even make a joke? Yeah. I know. I know.

I think that like, look, this is the kind of, we knew what we were getting into when we started this podcast. Yeah. We've spoken about numerous women who have been killed at the hands of dickhead partners, dickhead randoms, whatever, but there is something that feels so completely, it's just, it just doesn't make any logical sense.

It's horror upon horror and it doesn't let up. No. And I don't know.

Look, completely recognising my privilege to be a white woman in a fairly, well, in comparison, an incredibly liberal society and community, I can't imagine how conflicting this must be to those in the community that also aren't suffering, but recognise the behaviours or how the, I don't want to use the word shame, but the shame of that happening. It's happened because someone felt shame, but actually like, oh, I don't know. I don't know what I'm trying to say.

There's a minefield here of being. I think that one of the other things that was quite interesting that was said in the documentary, and again, I will make sure that it's up front and centre because it's brilliant and it was, and DCI Good worked with the filmmaker on it and they've become very close because of it. But like there is a part of it where someone, it might have been Diana from the lady that I quoted at the end, but she basically says like, these sorts of killings, these sorts of, this sort of violence.

I even did it myself at the beginning where you kind of make apologies for like, oh, I don't want to be seen as saying the wrong thing. I don't want people, I'm not tiring everyone with the same brush because we're not. But there is this idea of like, if you don't call out the bad behaviour for fear of being racist or for fear of being actually just perpetuates.

I'd rather talk about it incorrectly and be educated on why I'm incorrect and then learn, than it be not spoken about because of fear and therefore not get the attention it deserves to make change. Yeah, 100%. But that was one of the reasons they were giving about like, why the police, because they were like, oh, well, you know, we don't want to be seen as, you know, is it, you know, she's saying it's this.

I know, I know. They're going to be murdered. I know.

Fuck off. It's just, it's just ridiculous. The difference between sitting here and not wanting to mispronounce someone's name or not want to sully someone's religion or culture or creed or whatever, like whatever.

It's a very big difference than being literally the people meant to uphold the law and to keep the people, all of the people safe. Yeah, yeah. Fuck the impression of you.

If you're doing your job right, things like an occasional Oh, God, here we go, because I'm gonna get myself in trouble. But like, an occasional misstep will be forgiven if your track record is that 99% of the time you're getting it right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And I think that as long as like, and I don't, you know, I'm not in the position of the police. I'm not in the position of authority or responsibility when it comes to any of this stuff.

But, and I can't imagine how difficult it is to try and deal with the minefield of some of the stuff that they deal with and whatever. But you're right. Like, you've, in this case, particularly, there is a frightened young woman who is coming to you telling you that what she's done by leaving her abusive husband is not seen as right in her culture.

She is in danger. She is fearing for her life. And she is being ignored because someone somewhere doesn't want someone to think that they're racist.

And like, I opened up another thing, right? Like, even if, even if she was wrong, or even if she was lying, or even if she was making it up, she's obviously not well. Yeah, exactly. I have a response, a duty of care.

There's still a responsibility there. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, oh, it's a dumpster fire. It really is. It really is.

But I mean, the only glimmer of light in all of this is as I say, like there has, it is because of this case, because of how horrific it was because of Shafili or Ahmed, which I don't believe was any less harrowing. And I, there was a part of me that wanted to reference it, but it was already so long and so dark. I was like, I can't I can't do that to myself or to you lovely Trevors.

But if you are interested in kind of and I would say if any of this strikes a chord with you, go and find out about what happened to Shafili as well, because these cases are as horrific and awful as they are. They are the reason why people are more receptive to the concept of honour based violence. It's why people are more open to accepting that it is a thing that happens.

So again, we always try and find the little glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. The more you know, the more helpful you are. I don't know what that sentence was going to be.

But I'm sure there's like a popular saying. There probably is. The more you know.

Forewarned is forearmed. But that's not what I mean. No.

Also whenever I say forearmed, I'm just like, I've got two of the wrists. But yeah, done. That was a lot.

Yeah, it's fucking ridiculous and awful. But incredibly well researched, babe. Thank you.

I would also encourage people to if you are interested in any of this, Bacow, but Mahmood has a book that I can go and find interviews with her. I think she's on BBC Breakfast fairly recently, actually. And then also if you wanted to kind of see all that horror in a dramatised way, honour is actually very good.

I think Keely Hawes is brilliant. She's very good. But yeah, she is DCI Caroline Caroline Goode.

And I think yeah, let's get that petition going. DCI Goode can be in charge of the police. Just make her in charge of everything in the world.

Thank you. Goodbye. Perfect.

So if you'd like to join our petition, we'll probably put it on our website, which is look how good I am at that segue, which is sinisterselfpod.co.uk. We're also on Instagram under sinisterselfpod. We're on TikTok. Don't ask me what it is.

And you can email us at sinisterselfpodcast at gmail.com. Yay! And email us, no do, because then I'll read it and I won't tell Rachel and then me and you could be friends. See what she's doing? I'm not allowed friends, but she is as a fan. No friends for you.

No friends for me. I've got enough. I have so many personalities.

How could you need more friends? Genuinely, you cover every facet. You are who you are. Yeah.

I'm joking. I know. Only a little bit.

But yeah, if you if you liked the episode, if you liked if you like us in general, Sinister Self, the podcast, us as people, whatever, leave us a nice review. Don't leave us any horrible stuff because we will just not publish it. As is our want.

As is our want. And hug the people you love a little bit tighter. And listen to them.

And believe women. Believe women. Right.

On that note, I love you, Trevors. I love you, Trevors. Goodbye.