Sometimes, it’s the forbidden stories, the ones people are afraid to tell in full, the ones that emerge only in fragments, that reveal the truth about a place.

This is such a story.

It’s being told now not because the complete truth is known, but because the story nags at those familiar with its outlines, and because it says as much about Iraq’s progress as it does about Iraq’s resistance to change.

This much is known:

A young woman imprisoned in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, sent a letter to her brother last summer, appealing for help. The woman, named Dalal, wrote that she was pregnant after being raped by prison guards.

The brother asked to visit her. Guards obliged. The brother walked into her cell, drew a gun and shot his visibly pregnant sister dead.

His goal: to spare his family the taint of a pregnancy out of wedlock, a disgrace in Iraq often averted through so-called honor killings of women by their relatives.

For prison guards, the killing was also a relief.

“They believed that her death would end the case,” said a lab worker at Baghdad’s central morgue, where the victim’s body — still carrying the 5-month-old fetus — was sent.

The case might have ended there were it not for the morgue employee, who was determined to see those responsible held to account.

At the employee’s insistence, lab workers using freshly acquired DNA-testing equipment drew a sample from the fetus. The prison guards were ordered to submit DNA samples and did so, apparently unaware of the sophistication of the morgue equipment and the people trained to use it.

“They thought we were incapable of figuring it out,” said the morgue employee.

The DNA results showed that the father of the unborn baby was a police lieutenant colonel who reportedly supervised guards at the prison.

In another society, the scientific evidence would have led to arrests and prosecution. But this being Iraq, the power wielded by men in uniform and the belief that a raped woman is better off dead combined to cloud the truth.

Months passed after word leaked of the killing on a sweltering summer day. Just as it nagged at the morgue worker, it nagged at us. But how to tell a story that nobody wants told? Everyone had different, usually conflicting, versions of what had happened.

Only the morgue worker’s story remained the same, repeated in phone calls and e-mails as summer turned to fall and then winter.

Then, it was time for one of us to leave Iraq. A colleague asked what the reporter’s final story would be. There must be one after so long in the country, he insisted.

“Isn’t there a story that got away?” he asked.

It became clear that this was it, even if we still didn’t know the truth.

About the only thing anyone agrees on is that a young woman was murdered, and that her last days were spent pregnant and worrying about what would happen if she were released into a society that would condemn her for it.

According to a judge in the Tikrit court, the lieutenant colonel implicated by DNA and a police captain also accused in the case were arrested on rape charges but then released for lack of evidence. The judge said a third defendant, a police lieutenant, remained in custody. (It is not uncommon in Iraq for police officers to serve as prison guards and supervisors.)

Another Tikrit court official said the lieutenant colonel and captain remained in custody but were transferred from Tikrit to Baghdad. Col. Hatem Thabit, spokesman for the police in Salahuddin province, where the crime was committed, concurred with this account.

Yet other accounts say the matter was settled through tribal justice. The clan of the accused lieutenant colonel paid the woman’s family to drop charges, said some people in the area who are familiar with the case but fearful of discussing it openly.

The morgue worker said those involved in the lab testing understood that all three of the police officers were freed.

“I heard the dispute was solved by a tribal ransom,” the employee said.

“The issue bothers me a lot. I’m doing my job, and the bad guys are getting back on the street.”

There are conflicting reports on the brother’s status. Some say he was jailed for killing his sister. Others say he was freed as part of the tribal deal.

As for the slain woman, several accounts say she was in prison not because she was a convicted or accused criminal, but because police wanted to question her brother about something. They thought he would turn himself in to free Dalal. Nobody has been able to explain why police wanted to talk to the brother.

The prison where she was held houses mainly men. There is a small section for female inmates, usually no more than a few at a time. A female guard is supposed to watch over them. No one could explain how the lieutenant colonel was able to do what he did.

Nor could anyone say how Dalal’s brother got into her cell with a loaded gun.

“He was supposed to be searched,” said Thabit, the police spokesman. “Where he got the weapon, we don’t know.”

In Iraq, violence against women is a festering but rarely addressed problem. There are no readily available statistics on “honor” killings. The number of rapes reported to police averages five to 10 per month for the entire country, said an official at Baghdad’s central morgue, who released the first details of the Tikrit case last summer.

“The actual number of rapes is actually more than we know. There are so many rapes in the prisons, for example,” he added before going on to cite the Tikrit case to an Iraqi working for The Times. Realizing he was discussing a case not intended for public consumption, the official urged the reporter not to translate the facts for his English-speaking colleague.

But minutes later, another morgue official and then the lab worker confirmed the case. All asked not to be identified for fear of losing their jobs.

Other workers interviewed during a daylong visit to the morgue, where rape victims are examined, said they had detected an increase in violent crimes against women since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion ushered in a religious conservatism and brought social and economic upheaval.

Most are honor killings, said one morgue employee, who a day earlier had received the body of a pregnant woman with her throat slit.

Human rights advocates say many of these homicides are made to look like honor killings to gain leniency for the perpetrators.

“It’s a lot worse now,” said Ibtisam Hamody Azzawi, a former engineer who runs a small aid organization for abused women from her home in Baghdad.

“Our society witnessed so much war, and this is reflected in the domestic abuse situation.

“Everything is violence. Even the kids love war,” said Azzawi, whose husband, a university dean, was killed by extremists in 2007.

Much of her time is spent answering knocks on her door or phone calls from women looking for an escape from abusive homes. People find her by word of mouth. She does not tell her neighbors what she does, lest extremists attack her or one of her daughters.

Iraq has no shelters for battered or threatened women, and the war has splintered and displaced families who might have taken in female relatives. Amid the turmoil, homicide has become an easy out for husbands wanting to end their marriages, Azzawi said. It’s cheaper than divorce.

“Women get killed, but often it is reported that they are missing,” she said. “It’s all part of the chaos. Some husbands kill their wives and say maybe she was kidnapped, maybe she died in a bombing.

“A husband and wife will have domestic problems. All of a sudden, the wife will disappear.”

At the women’s prison in Tikrit, Saturday is visiting day. On a summer Saturday, a brother came to see his sister, her stomach swelling with her unborn child.

She trusted him.

LA Times

A Jordanian teenager has been charged with premeditated murder after he said he stabbed his sister to death because she frequently left home without permission, a judicial official said on Monday.The unidentified 19-year-old “turned himself in and confessed to killing his 22-year-old sister on Sunday because she frequently left her family’s house without permission” in Sahab south of Amman, the official told AFP.

“The suspect, who was charged on Sunday night, stabbed the girl in different parts of her body, claiming he wanted to cleanse his family’s honour although forensic tests proved that she was a virgin.”

Murder is punishable by the death penalty in Jordan, but in the case of so-called “honour killings,” a court usually commutes or reduces sentences if the family of a victim drops charges against the killer.

Between 15 and 20 women are murdered every year in the kingdom in cases involving “family honour.” Last year around 17 such killings were recorded.

Perpetrators often get relatively light sentences as lawmakers have refused to reform the penal code to ensure harsher punishment, despite demands by local and international human rights activists.

When Elif’s father told her she had to kill herself in order to spare him from a prison sentence for her murder, she considered it long and hard. “I loved my father so much, I was ready to commit suicide for him even though I hadn’t done anything wrong,” the 18-year-old said. “But I just couldn’t go through with it. I love life too much.”

All Elif had done was simply decline the offer of an arranged marriage with an older man, telling her parents she wanted to continue her education. That act of disobedience was seen as bringing dishonour on her whole family – a crime punishable by death. “I managed to escape. When I was at school, a few girls I knew were killed by their families in the name of honour – one of them for simply receiving a text message from a boy,” Elif said.

So-called “honour killings” in Turkey have reached record levels. According to government figures, there are more than 200 a year – half of all the murders committed in the country. Now, in a sinister twist, comes the emergence of “honour suicides”. The growing phenomenon has been linked to reforms to Turkey’s penal code in 2005. That introduced mandatory life sentences for honour killers, whereas in the past, killers could receive a reduced sentence claiming provocation. Soon after the law was passed, the numbers of female suicides started to rocket.

Elif has spent the past eight months on the run, living in hiding and in fear. Her uncles and other relatives are looking to hunt her down, for dishonour is seen as a stain that can only be cleansed by death. One of the women’s shelters where Elif has stayed has been raided by armed family members.

Elif is from Batman, a grey, bleak town in the south-east of Turkey nicknamed “Suicide City”. Three quarters of all suicides here are committed by women – nearly everywhere else in the world, men are three times more likely to kill themselves. “I think most of these suicide cases are forced. There are just too many of them, it’s too suspicious. But they’re almost impossible to investigate,” said Mustafa Peker, Batman’s chief prosecutor.

Wearing tight clothes or talking to a man who is not a relative is sometimes all it takes to blacken the family name. Mr Peker said women who are told to kill themselves are usually given one of three options – a noose, a gun or rat poison. They are then locked in a room until the job is done.

A woman’s fate is usually decided during a “family council”, when the extended family meets to discuss breaches of honour. In these meetings, it is agreed how the victim must be killed. If it is not to be a forced suicide, a killer is chosen. The youngest member of the family is often ordered to kill, in the belief they will be treated more leniently if caught.

Mehmet was 17 when he was handed a gun and told he would have to kill his stepmother and her lover. “I didn’t want to do it. I was so young and so scared,” he said. Mehmet ran away, but his family tracked him down and warned him his own life would be in danger if he refused to kill.

He shot dead his stepmother’s lover, but his stepmother survived the attack. He was given a two-and-a-half- year prison sentence.

“There were many other ‘honour killers’ in prison and we were treated with respect, even by the prison guards,” Mehmet said.

Most honour killings happen in the Kurdish region, a barren land ravaged by years of war and oppression. Rural communities here are ruled under a strict feudal, patriarchal system. But as Kurds have fled the fighting between separatist rebels and Turkey’s government, the crime is spreading across the country into its cities and towns. According to a recent government report, there is now one honour killing a week in Istanbul.

“Families who move here are suddenly faced with modern, secular Turkey,” said Vildan Yirmibesoglu, the head of Istanbul’s department of human rights. “This clash of cultures is making the situation worse as the pressure on women to behave conservatively is become more acute. And of course there are more temptations.”

Ms Yirmibesoglu believes that the entrenched belief in the notion of honour – at all levels of society – is impeding any progress. “Honour killings aren’t always properly investigated because some police and prosecutors share the same views as the honour killers,” she said. “For things to change, police, prosecutors and even judges need to be educated on gender equality.”

The Independent

A teenager has been burned to death at her home in India in an “honour killing” by neighbours.

Four residents of her village in Ghaziabad, north India, allegedly set the 16-year-old Muslim girl alight after they suspected her of having a relationship with a boy.

Police claim residents kept a vigil on her house as they noticed the boy visited her frequently when her father was away.

The four men then beat her, doused her with kerosene and set her on fire.

District police chief Akhil Kumar said: “The four men came to the girl’s house and demanded to know why the young man frequently visited her. The girl’s younger sister, who felt the visitors were getting violent, ran out of the house.

“Meanwhile, the accused beat up the girl and then set her on fire with kerosene oil.”

She gave a dying statement to the police saying the accused beat her and set her on fire.

Vijay Singh, station officer at Bhojpur police station in Ghaziabad, said: “The girl has succumbed to her injuries. We have been looking for the four men accused in this case. One of them has been caught and charged with murder.”

Jordan’s prosecutor has charged a man and his two sons for the premeditated murder of his 19-year-old daughter Saturday, in the latest “honour killing” to take place in this conservative desert kingdom. The man and his two sons were charged with beating to death the daughter for leaving the house in makeup and talking to a stranger, according to prosecutor Salah al-Taleb’s indictment sheet.

The father brought his daughter to the hospital after she lost consciousness and turned himself in.

Autopsy showed severe injuries to the head which caused brain hemorrhage and the body was covered with bruises.

If convicted the man could be sentenced to life in jail.

The man comes from the eastern Jordanian town of Zarqa, home of slain Iraqi al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and known for its conservatism.

In Jordan, an average of 20 women are killed by male relatives each year. Men have the final say in all family matters in this largely conservative society, where many consider sex out of wedlock an indelible stain on a family’s reputation.

International human rights organizations have condemned honour killings in Jordan and appealed to King Abdullah to put an end to the practice.

The government urged judges to consider honour killings equal to other homicides, punishable with up to life in prison.

But attempts to introduce harsher sentences have been blocked in Jordan’s parliament, where the predominantly conservative Bedouin legislators argue that tougher penalties would lead to adultery.