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February 10, 2008

UK: Headless Man - Another Muslim Honor Killing?

Early on Wednesday morning, February 6, a passer-by in Kingsgate Place in Kentish Town, north London, found a headless male body wrapped in a bloodstained duvet. The body was inside a supermarket goods cage, behind a row of shops.

A murder suspect has been named. He is 45-year old Mohammed Boudjenane, who lives in nearby Kingsgate Road, Kilburn. He will appear tomorrow at Highbury Magistrates Court.

On Friday, this individual, along with a man and a woman were arrested from an address in Alvaston, Derby. The unnamed man and woman are currently being questioned about assisting an offender.

The body's manner of death has still not been ascertained, and the head has still not been found.

The fact that a man and a woman are under suspicion of complicity in assisting the presumed killer to escape justice, and with the prime suspect named as a Muslim, suggests - until evidence proves otherwise - that this could be an honor crime.

News on the case comes from This is Local London, Reuters, Press Association, In The News, BBC, ABC.net.au, and (again) the Press Association.

On February 2, we mentioned "Crimes of the Community: Honour-based violence in the UK", a report on honor violence. This was written by James Brandon and Salam Hafez, and is produced by the Centre for Social Cohesion.

In today's Sunday Independent, it is reported that the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) claims that official figures on honor violence are grossly underestimated. The true figure, they claim, is 35 times higher with up to 17,000 women subjected to violence.

Studies from Pakistan and Bangladesh, and evidence from British honor killing cases, also show that men are sometimes killed for transgressions against honor. Admittedly, the vast majority of honor victims are women, with women usually the subject of domestic violence connected with "honor". However, the ACPO do not appear to mention men as possible victims.

The Home Office is working on a plan to reduce honor violence by aiming to "improve the response of police and other agencies" and "ensure that victims are encouraged to come forward with the knowledge that they will receive the help and support they need."

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office will be urging consular officials in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan to do more to identify British citizens who have been subjected to forced marriage. Later this year, a Civil Protection Bill will come into effect in Britain. This will give courts more powers to deal with forced marriage.

The head of ACPO's forced marriage unit is Commander Steve Allen. He told a committee of MPs last week: "We work on a figure which suggests it is about 500 cases shared between us and the Forced Marriage Unit per year. If the generally accepted statistic is that a victim will suffer 35 experiences of domestic violence before they report, then I suspect if you multiplied our reporting by 35 times you may be somewhere near where people's experience is at."

Marilyn Mornington is a district judge and is chair of the Domestic Violence Working Group. She said to the home affairs commititee: "We need a national strategy to identify the large number of pupils, particularly girls, missing from school registers who have been taken off the register and are said to be home schooled, which leads to these issues. Airport staff and other staff need to be trained to recognise girls who are being taken out of the country. We are bringing three girls a week back from Islamabad as victims of forced marriage. We know that is the tip of the iceberg, but that is the failure end. It has to be part of education within the communities and the children themselves."

The Sunday Independent quoted former Bradford policeman Philip Balmforth, who assists vulnerable south Asian women. He said that in 2007 there were 385 cases of forced marriage in Bradford. He recounted that "I had a case of a 14-year-old girl at school. The teacher tells me that the girl claims to have been married. So I went along to the school with a Muslim colleague. We saw the girl. We asked her a few questions and we were not sure. Then the girl said: 'If you don't believe me I have the video at home.'"

In 2007 in Bradford, 250 girls aged between 13 and 16 were removed from school registers after failing to return from trips abroad, suggesting many were forced into marriage.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at February 10, 2008 3:39 PM

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Posted by: ERS at February 10, 2008 4:45 PM

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