Europe News

German police accuse Kurdish men of "honour killing"

Apr 2, 2009, 17:40 GMT

Kleve, Germany - German police charged Thursday that the grisly death of a 20-year-old ethnic Kurdish woman had been an 'honour killing,' and that her brother had confessed to the crime.

Germans have been outraged at a recent series of execution-style honour killings of young women by immigrant families.

The murder of Gulsum S, 20, on a lonely country road one month ago had been made to look as it were a robbery, said police in Kleve, near the Dutch border, as they announced the arrest and remand in custody of the victim's brother, 20, and father.

Prosecutors said Gulsum was lured by a false story to the side road near the small town of Rees on March 2. Her sibling, who was also a triplet to Gulsum, allegedly choked her unconscious with a clothes line. She was then clubbed to death.

The brother admitted to the killing, but the father denied the charge of joint murder, police said.

Police said the family had attempted to force Gulsum into a planned marriage and then discovered she was not a virgin and had undergone one or more abortions.

Gulsum had left home last year with the help of welfare officials and moved to a safe house, but then returned home to Rees.

The brother had taken Gulsum's purse so as to make the killing look like a fatal mugging.

Honour killings occur in conservative central Asian societies which view female premarital sex as a stain on their reputation.

In a similar case, a 24-year-old ethnic Tajik youth from Afghanistan was convicted in February of stabbing to death his schoolgirl sister, Morsal O, aged 16, in Hamburg last year.