This is Banaz Mahmod, who was given twenty years on earth. And no more.
Ten years ago her Kurdish family immigrated to London from Iraq, to escape Saddam, they said. The father married teenaged Banaz to a man who harmed her.
She ran, kept running.
Four times, she pled for protection from London Police. Four times, they dismissed her.
Killers raped her first, then strangled her, buried her in a garden belonging to colluders.
At trial, a female police officer, who’d earlier dismissed Banaz’s four different pleadings for protection, as “dramatic and calculating” thus giving the girl no refuge, no investigation… admitted at the murder trial in Old Bailey court, that she’d made “a dreadful mistake.”
Of three thugs who violated and then murdered Banaz, one admits it. The other two killers have fled back to Iraq after publicly bragging about their rapes and murders of Banaz.
Yes, rapes, plural. Yes, murders plural.
First, spirit; then, mind; then, body.
Though father and uncle had ordered Banaz’s death like they were ordering off a menu, yes, they protested all three months during their murder trial that they were innocent.
They’d not anticipated angels of Justice can give evidence; living on in electronic air and in the ink of written word, long after a soul is gone.
Banaz had recorded on her cell phone a film of herself telling of her terror.
The letter she had written pleading with police to protect her, and why, and who by name she feared would murder her, was still in a file at the station.
These were brought before the jury.
The father and uncle were found guilty this week.
Banaz’s four sisters still live. One brave sister, also very young, testified against her father, and fears for her life.
Five police officers who didn’t didn’t didn’t didn’t, four times didn’t…
are being investigated, to see what could have been, can be done in the future… differently.
May Banaz live forever, and may all persons concerned who have hearts, be made attentive and wise to the good, by her death.