Another "honor" killing in the UK

Yasmin Bibi Rakha was a young woman born to a Muslim Pakistani family in Halifax, UK. All she wanted was simply to exercise her fundamental right to marry the man she loved - in this case, another Pakistani named Mian Shahid Mehmood. But like too many women in Muslim families, she was already promised in marriage to her cousin from a very young age. She defied her family and married her true love anyway, the couple living like fugitives from her family until one day Yasmin's brother hired three men to kill Mehmood. All four of them were just convicted for the crime of murder.

These so-called "honor" killings happen so frequently in Europe I can hardly keep up with them; and they are only a drop in the bucket compared to such killings worldwide. Once again, I wonder why people who want to keep their cultural traditions so badly (in this case to such an extreme extent that it drives them to murder), would immigrate to the UK in the first place?

Although justice was served for the four men, it was still incomplete. Yasmin's father and mother, as well as other unnamed members of the Pakistani community, fully encouraged the killing, the father even joyously singing after Mr. Mehmood's death.

At the trial, Yasmin initially refused to testify, because she felt she was losing her entire family, first to murder, then to prison.

Honestly, Yasmin, you are better off without this family.