Danish police suspect more honor killings of immigrant women

Copenhagen Post:

Police are investigating the disappearance of two young women with immigrant backgrounds. They fear that their relatives killed them to protect the family's honour.

Police have launched secret investigations into the fate of two young immigrant women, fearing that their relatives might have killed them for disobeying them and harming their families' honour.

Daily newspaper BT reported that the police feared for the lives of two women who had disappeared without a trace. Their families had reported them missing, but told the police they had probably gone home to their countries of origin.

Police spokesman, detective Kurt Kragh, said the explanation had aroused the police's suspicion.

Earlier this fall, an 18-year-old Pakistani girl named Ghazala Abbas was murdered in broad daylight by her older brother a day after she married a young Afghani man, whom her family did not approve of.

Many of the girl's relatives have been arrested for ordering, planning, and assisting in her slaying in order to protect the family's honour.

'We know from earlier cases that when girls like Ghazala ignore their families and run away from home because they fell in love with a man, there is a big risk in some families that the girl is tracked down and either sent to her country of origin to an uncertain fate or killed here in Denmark,' Kragh said.

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