The chilling true story behind Netflix drama Honor: The detective who led the murder investigation that inspired the hit series reveals how she fought to uncover the truth and find Banaz Mahmod’s killers

The detective who led the investigation into the brutal murder of a young Iraqi-Kurdish woman by her family has revealed startling details about how she uncovered the crime which is now being dramatised in a moving Netflix series.

Viewers were left in tears after watching Honour, a two-part series based on the 2006 murder of Banaz Mahmod, who was then 20.

She was killed on the orders of her father Mahmod Mahmod and her uncle Ari Mahmod who recruited other family members and friends to commit what is known as an “honour killing”.

Banaz fled a forced marriage she entered into at the age of 17, after being repeatedly raped and beaten by her husband, ten years her senior. She returned to live in her family’s south London home and fell in love with a Kurdish man, Rahmat Suleimani.

She was accused of bringing “shame” to the family, with her father and uncle hatching a diabolical plan to have her killed in the most savage way possible in order to restore their “honour” and “reputation” within the community.

Banaz suffered horrific sexual abuse before being strangled to death in the family home. Her body was then stuffed into a suitcase and taken to Birmingham, where it was buried in the garden of a derelict house.

Honour tells the harrowing story of DCI Caroline Goode’s passionate investigation into the young woman’s fate after she was reported missing from her home by Mr Suleimani.

Keely Hawes stars as DCI Goode and graphically captures the police officer’s dedication to catching the culprits, the obstacles she faced and how a chance observation of a freezer from a helicopter led to their convictions.

Speaking to MailOnline, DCI Goode said: “This is the most complex and challenging investigation I have ever been involved in. From the outset we were faced with a conspiracy of silence from the Iraqi-Kurdish community in the UK and we had very little evidence to draw on.

“This case was unusual because normally when you investigate a murder you try to get justice for the family. But in this case the family was not interested in justice because they were the ones who had ordered the murder.”

She added: “So we committed ourselves to getting justice for Banaz. That was the only thing that kept us going. We called her ‘our daughter’ because she had become like a member of the family.”

In the months before her disappearance, Banaz reported to police five times that her family wanted her dead, but no action was taken.

Officers spoke to the family after Rahmat reported her missing, but Banaz’s family colluded in a conspiracy of lies, insisting they were liberal and “Westernised” and that she often stayed out at night and was free to come and go as she pleased.

Chief Inspector Goode, who was at the time a senior detective in the Metropolitan Police’s homicide command, then received a call from a local police station asking for advice and sensed something was wrong.

She said: “We discussed the circumstances surrounding her disappearance and decided that she was likely to be at serious risk. It was unusual for her to disappear in this way and we also realised that she had previously reported threats of violence from her family.”

“Their claims that they were liberal and that Banaz was allowed to live as she wished did not hold water.”

Chief Inspector Goode then took over the investigation, turning it into a possible murder inquiry, and brought in the main suspects for questioning: Banaz’s father, Mahmod Mahmod, and uncle, Ari; his cousins ​​Omar Hussain and Mohammed Ali; and a man called Mohammed Hama.

Dozens of homes were raided across the country. More than thirty people, all Kurds, were arrested and questioned, and more than twenty vehicles and 300 mobile phones were seized.

A crucial turning point in the case came in February 2006, when Hama was charged with Banaz’s murder and taken into custody.

Faced with a community conspiracy of silence and Hama providing an alibi, DCI Goode ordered his conversations and phone calls from prison to be recorded, leading to a breakthrough.

An interpreter listening to the recordings was horrified to hear Hama laughing as he boasted about raping Banaz before stepping on the terrified girl’s head and tying a rope around her neck.

He then spoke of the body being put “in a suitcase” and Ari Mahmod dragging it out of the house to a waiting car.

Chief Inspector Goode admitted: “It was horrible to hear that, there are no words to describe how devastated we all were. But we still didn’t have Banaz’s body and there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him or the others, so it was a race against time because he was going to get out eventually.”

A second discovery came when Hama’s mobile phone showed he had been driving back and forth to the Handsworth area of ​​Birmingham the day after he disappeared. Then, in a conversation, he was recorded asking: “Have you put the freezer back on the patio?”

Amazingly, just a few days earlier, Inspector Goode had been flying over the area in a police surveillance helicopter, searching in vain for signs of land disturbance. At one point, she spotted an abandoned freezer on a terrace.

She said: “When I read the transcript of Hama’s conversation, I thought, ‘I saw this freezer.’ We determined the exact location of the house, it was empty. The garden was overgrown and there was just a pile of household rubbish and this freezer.”

Banaz’s body was found in an old suitcase buried under the patio, with a freezer on top. She could only be identified through her dental records and the cord used to strangle her to death was still around her neck.

Recalling the moment her body was discovered, Inspector Goode said: “I thought I would be ecstatic, but I wasn’t. The whole experience was full of pathos. It was tragic to think of the sordid way Banaz had been killed and that there was a human being locked in that suitcase.”

“It was crucial to the case, but it wasn’t pleasant at all, just very sad.”

Banaz moved to the UK with her family in 1995 from Iraq after fleeing Saddam Hussein’s regime.

In total, 50 members of the Kurdish community have been linked to his murder, providing false alibis to his killers and helping them dispose of his body.

After her body was found, Banaz’s father, uncle and other relatives were charged with her murder or conspiring to murder her.

In 2007, after a three-month trial at the Old Bailey, his father Mahmod Mahmod was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

His uncle, Ari Mahmod, was also convicted of the murder and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Mohamad Hama also admitted to the murder and was sentenced to at least 17 years in prison.

Three years later, Banaz’s cousins, Omar Hussain and Mohamad Saleh Ali, who carried out the murder, were extradited from Iraq and sentenced to 22 and 21 years to life in prison, respectively.

They are the first suspects to be extradited to Britain from Iraq after Detective Chief Inspector Goode and his team tracked them down.

Recalling the convictions of Banaz’s killers, Chief Inspector Goode said: “We all went to the pub and got drunk. There was a lot of emotion and relief because we had all done our jobs properly and they didn’t get away with it.”

“We had justice for Banaz, that was the only thing we wanted. But at the same time, we were very sad because a beautiful young woman had been killed in this way.”

Banaz’s boyfriend Rahmet, who testified at her family’s trial, was later placed in witness protection but never recovered. He committed suicide in 2016.

One of her sisters, Bekhal, also testified and is currently under protection. Another sister, Payzee, is a leading campaigner against honour-based violence and forced marriages.

Chief Inspector Goode, now 62, was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal in 2012 for her work and retired from the Metropolitan Police after 33 years of service. She now works in the private sector and has written a book about her role in the Banaz case, entitled Honour: Achieving Justice for Banaz Mahmod.

In total, she worked on 100 murder investigations during her police career, but describes Banaz’s as the “most important”.

She said: “I’m really pleased that the issue of honour killings is back in the spotlight. It’s good that more is being done to raise awareness of honour killings because victims need to have the courage to come forward and we all need to know more about it.”