"During the three-month trial, prosecutors said Mahmod's father beat his daughter for using hairspray and adopting other Western ways. Her uncle once told her she would have been "turned to ashes" if she were his daughter and had shamed the family by becoming involved with the Iranian Kurd, her sister 22-year-old Bekhal Mahmod testified.
Banaz Mahmod ran away from home when she was a teenager but returned when her father sent her an audio tape in which he warned he would kill her sisters, her mother and himself if she did not come home, her sister said.
She was later hospitalized after her brother attacked her, the sister told the court. The brother said he had been paid by their father to finish her off but in the end was unable to do it, said the sister, who testified in a full black burqa. She said she still feared for her own life.
The years of Banaz Mahmod's abuse were compounded by police officers who repeatedly dismissed her cries for help.
She first went to police in December 2005, saying she suspected her uncle was trying to kill her and her boyfriend. She sent police a letter naming the men who she thought would later kill her.
On New Year's Eve, she was lured by her father to her grandmother's home, where she suspected he planned to attack her after he forced her to gulp down brandy and approached her while wearing gloves. She escaped by breaking a window and was treated at a hospital.
Police dismissed her suspicions, and one officer, who is under investigation, considered charging her with damages for breaking her grandmother's window."
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"Her body wasn't discovered until three months later after police tracked phone records.
Britain has seen more than 25 women killed by their Muslim relatives in the past decade for offenses they believed brought shame on the family. More than 100 other homicides are under investigation as potential honor killings.
Some Muslim communities in Britain practice Sharia, or strict Islamic law.
"We're seeing an increase around the world, due in part to the rise in Islamic fundamentalism," said Diana Nammi with the London-based ."