The murder of Banaz Mahmod, a Kurdish Muslim woman, by her father and uncle, has brought the practice of honour killings to the attention of the public and has again emphasised the plight of Asian women caught between traditional religious customs and modern Western values. Moreover, the death of Miss Mahmod, 20, forces us to examine how such crimes are treated by the criminal courts and raises a question about the quality of policing in such cases.

The police believe that there may be as many as 12 such killings in the UK every year. They are typically perpetrated by relatives of the victims or by members of their community and are usually planned well in advance.

In 2003 British police attended a conference at The Hague to discuss the increasing numbers of people dying in this way. At the time Andy Baker, head of the serious crime directorate of the Metropolitan Police, said that “police had been unaware and ignorant of crimes that were going on” and admitted that honour killing was not on the police radar.

It is of great concern that, four years on, police officers still seem to lack a basic knowledge of the phenomenon. In the case of Miss Mahmod, a police officer dismissed her claims that her father and uncle were trying to kill her as “melodramatic”. In court that female officer admitted that she had not recorded the threat to kill Miss Mahmod in her official report. Banaz Mahmod disappeared, only to be found murdered three months later. Her father, Mahmod Mahmod, and her uncle, Ari Mahmod, were convicted of murder at the Old Bailey last week.

Mistakes such as this have led to calls from the police and other groups for a change in the law to deal specifically with honour killings. However, while general and well-founded criticisms can be made about the state of the criminal justice system, there seems very little merit in the idea that specific provisions should be introduced for murders of this nature. The existing law in England and Wales is more than appropriate to deal with this type of offence, both on a substantive and procedural level.

Although the defence of provocation to murder has been dismissed by an ill-informed few as a loophole, it continues to exist in English law and is often employed in honour-killing cases. The defence has and continues to work effectively; a defendant being tried for murder of any nature cannot even raise the defence before a jury unless and until it has passed judicial scrutiny. This, together with the requirement that the defendant demonstrate evidence of a genuine loss of self-control safeguards the defence of provocation from general abuse. The fact that juries have convicted defendants in honour killing-type cases is testament to this.

However, once convicted, the honour killing factor cannot be used as a basis of mitigation, unlike other countries where it plays a prominent role. In Pakistan and some Arab countries, for example, men convicted of an honour killing would be entitled to a significantly reduced sentence on the basis that the killing was prompted by sufficient provocation.

Considering the examples of judicial systems outside England and Wales, there is some force in suggesting that English courts, with their strong judiciary, special measures and properly defined defence of provocation, are well equipped to deal with cases of honour killing. If there is a problem, and there clearly is given the increasing incidence of this kind of murder, it appears to fall squarely on the shoulders of the police.

The revelation that a number of police officers had failed to take seriously Miss Mahmod’s cries for help points to a fundamental misunderstanding of the practice of honour killing and alludes to a wider ignorance of Asian culture in general.

After the conviction of Miss Mahmod’s father and uncle, Detective Chief Inspector Gerry Campbell, of the Metropolitan Police violent crime directorate, addressed the failings of the police and said that some women did not want to “criminalise” their families and so played down the threat that they faced. In modern Britain it seems that tragedies such as this could be better prevented if the police had a better knowledge of such practices.

The author is a barrister at 25 Bedford Row

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