Christians Under Attack

Nazir Afzal, the Crown Prosecution Service's director for west London, said that foreign Islamic terror groups had been identified as the driving force behind one murder and another threat to kill.

He also highlighted two cases in which women overseas had been forced to act as suicide bombers after being accused of shaming their families, and warned that the use of the Muslim faith to justify oppression and violence was spreading in Britain.

Mr Afzal's comments came at a London conference in which he spelt out the CPS's determination to bring the "full force of the law" to bear on the minority of Muslims who perpetrated or connived in honour-based violence.

He said that there were estimated to be about a dozen honour killings in Britain each year - and many more incidents of violence and bullying - and expressed concern that the problem was being inflamed by extremist ideology.

"When you talk to women who are victims of this type of behaviour you often find that they will say that their husbands or fathers have been radicalised in the way that they think about women," he said.

"They will use Islam as a justification for telling women how to behave and for punishing them. There is no religious justification for forcing your children to marry or harming them because they behave in a particular way, but there are people out there who are using their faith as a reason to do this.

"In the past, they might have said 'do this because I'm your dad', but when they are radicalised it is making them feel more confident about the way they behave towards the women in their family.

"It is allowing the man to say 'my religion says you must behave this way' and it puts a lot of extra pressure on the women in their families and can make them feel that they should toe the line because it is about faith and their culture."

Mr Afzal said that several cases had highlighted the link between extremist Islamic organisations and honour violence. One was a threat to kill a woman, known as B, whose name cannot be given for legal reasons, and the other, 16-year-old Londoner Heshu Yones, who was murdered by her father Abdalla in 2002 after forming a relationship of which he disapproved.

He added: "At least two female suicide bombers in recent months have had their terrible acts attributed to a choice - die for dishonouring your family or die in so-called jihad. There is no way out.

"In the UK case of B, the threats to kill Miss B may have come from her family but they originated in an Egyptian terrorist group who felt it was their job to enforce social order and the woman's place in society. They told the father to clean up his family's act."

Mr Afzal, who was speaking at a London Voluntary Services Council conference, said that in the Yones case "the trail appeared to lead to Kurdish groups", but insisted that such a use of Islam to support violence towards women was a grossly mistaken interpretation of the religion.

"There is nothing in Islam to support this. I have been on the Haj and I know a great deal about my faith and there is no way that it contains anything that says you should treat women in the way that some of my brothers in Islam do. It is simply outdated and it is about power and control over women, not religion."

The Met and the CPS announced three years ago that they were re-examining more than 100 deaths of women, including some apparent suicides, because of concern that the deceased might have been victims of honour killings or pressured to such an extent that they took their own lives. Dozens of cases are still being investigated.

The CPS is also planning to appoint specialist prosecutors over the coming months to focus on suspected honour killings

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