'Honour killing' father jailed

A Muslim father unable to tolerate the westernised lifestyle of his 16-year-old daughter was today jailed for life after cutting her throat.

The murder of Heshu Yones is being treated by the Met as an "honour killing" because she was perceived to have brought shame on her family. After killing the girl, Abdullah Yones then jumped from a third-floor window.

The schoolgirl had formed a sexual relationship with a Lebanese boyfriend who was a Christian and her father had found out.

Yones, 48, who survived the fall, had pleaded guilty to murdering his daughter at their flat in Acton last October.

Yones's counsel Icah Peart told the Old Bailey: "This really is a tragic story of irreconcilable cultural differences between a father with a traditional Kurdish upbringing and values and his beloved daughter who was a thoroughly westernised young woman." Yones sat in the dock as horrific details of his daughter's injuries were read out.

She was found lying in the blood-spattered bathroom of the third-floor flat with multiple stab wounds, including a cut throat and wounds to her back, breasts and chest.

More injuries to her hands and forearms showed she had tried desperately to defend herself.

Immediately after killing her Yones left the flat, locking the door behind him, and leapt from the balcony, sustaining severe injuries which required four months in hospital. As he lay being treated by paramedics he could be heard saying repeatedly that he wanted to die.

"He said he had done a terrible thing," said John McGuinness, QC, prosecuting.

He said of Heshu: "The picture that emerged was that Heshu was a bubbly, cheeky, fun-loving girl, popular at school and with her friends.

"Her father, a strict Muslim, didn't approve of her more westernised lifestyle - wanting to be with friends and having a mobile phone.

"There was tension at home. Her father wanted her to live according to a strict Muslim lifestyle and cultural traditions."

Last summer the family went back to Kurdistan for five weeks and Heshu feared that her father was going to try to arrange a marriage for her. However, this did not happen.

Initially she did not tell her parents of her relationship with her boyfriend.

"She was extremely anxious that her father shouldn't find out about the relationship," said Mr McGuinness.

"Sex before marriage was strictly forbidden, certainly with someone of the Muslim religion. She was extremely fearful of her father finding out." He said there was

"... some evidence that the defendant might have discovered that she had a boyfriend and she was no longer a virgin.

"This would have made an arranged marriage to a Muslim virtually impossible."

The court was told that Yones was given political asylum in Britain when he arrived from Kurdistan 10 years ago. He and his family and many of their friends had suffered greatly at the hands of Saddam Hussein.

Mr Peart told how Yones had never fully recovered from injuries sustained in a chemical weapons attack and although his daughter and sons had fully adjusted to European life he had been unable to do so.

Outside the court Detective Inspector Brent Hyatt said: "If Heshu had gone to the police people could have recognised the extreme danger she was in. It is vitally important that anyone who thinks they are at risk should get in touch with us."