Banaz: A Love Story

I found this film deeply moving and compelling. The filmmakers provide a context for the horrific practice of so-called honor killings within the Iraqui community in England (although it happens plenty of other places too, of course); the filmmakers provide a sense of why the crime persists without excusing the perpetrators. The victim's sister is spectacular; the victim herself "speaks" through taped statements she makes at the police department; and the officers who doggedly pursue Banaz's murderers are honest about police failures that might have contributed to the killing yet inspiring in their determination to solve the case.

I highly recommend this film.

This is a quite shocking story about a so-called honour killing in London. What sort of family forces one of its daughters to marry an abusive illiterate then murders her because she has brought "shame" on them by abandoning the marriage and taking up with a man who doesn't beat and sexually abuse her?

This was quite a high profile case, and is all the more shocking because the victim went to the police repeatedly, warning them that if anything happened to her...and giving them the names of her killers. We see footage of her said to have been aired for the first time. Eventually, in spite of omertà on a colossal scale, justice was done. It was though a pity this programme had to include a contribution from the odious Nazir Afzal.