A London court has found a Kurdish man guilty of organising the murder of his 20-year old daughter for undermining his family's "honour".
Prosecutors said that Mahmod Mahmod ordered his relatives to arrange the killing of his daugher Banaz in early 2006 after finding that she left the husband he had forced her to marry and was now dating an Iranian Kurd who was "not a strict Muslim", Reuters reported.
The details of the case - the latest 'honour killing' to come before the British courts - are evidence of rising Islamic radicalism according to Nazir Afzal, a Crown Prosecution Service director who organised one of the UK's largest conferences on honour killings in 2004.
"Radicalisation and extremism are about identity," Afzal told reuters before the court delivered its verdict on Monday.
"It's about people clinging to outdated customs to give them identity. There is no religious justification for this. There is nothing in any Koranic texts or any south Asian religion that justifies or excuses this type of crime.
"They will use religion, they will use culture, they will use 'this is the way things happen back home', they will use a number of excuses but ultimately it comes down to simple male power."
The murder of Banaz Mahmod has not only focused attention on the Kurdish community however but also on the conduct of the police.
Jurors heard how the girl - having narrowly escaped one near-fatal attack by her father - fled from her family home and arrived in hospital covered in cuts and bruises.
The police however took no action against her family.
A few months later she was killed - garrotted - and her body was stuffed into a suitcase and buried near Birmingham - where it was discovered thee months later.
Hannana Siddiqui of Southall Black Sisters, an organisation set up to tackle the abuse of women in minority communities, said the authorities were often reluctant to intervene to stop abuse in case they were seen as being "insensitive" to immigrant's traditional practices.
"The police and social services have not wanted to get involved in cases of abuse within communities because they think it would be culturally insensitive to do so," she told Reuters.
Several officers are being investigated as part of an internal review of the case by Scotland Yard's Directorate of Professional Standards.