Abdalla Yones stabbed his daughter, Heshu, at least 11 times and cut her throat with a kitchen knife.

Two days before the murder he had been sent an anonymous letter from a fellow Kurd which branded Heshu a prostitute and a slut for sleeping with her boyfriend, an 18-year-old Lebanese Christian.

He was horrified at what he regarded as a stain on the family’s name and, desperate to restore his honour, stabbed his daughter to death at their flat in Acton, West London, before attempting to kill himself by slashing his own throat and throwing himself off a 25-ft balcony.

Yones, a refugee from Iraq, despised his only daughter’s Western lifestyle and was anxious that she should lead her life according to Muslim tradition and culture.

He had previously tried to beat her into submission but Heshu, described by friends as a bubbly, cheeky, fun-loving girl, continued to wear pretty dresses and enjoy a social life.

Yones even put a gun to her head, police said, during a visit to Kurdish Iraq last year where she was terrified she would be forced into an arranged marriage.

She attempted to placate him by dressing down at home and only putting on make-up when away from the family but remained terrified he would discover she had a boyfriend.

Yones, 48, was a traditional member of the Iraqi Kurdish community with a strong belief in the idea of family honour. On October 12 last year he snatched a mobile telephone from Heshu as she chatted to a friend and cornered her in the bathroom, where he stabbed her in the chest, back, neck and cut her throat.

Defence wounds on her arms showed the teenager had tried to fend him off but he was too strong for her. The onslaught so savage that the knife bent, the tip snapped off and one blow broke a bone.

Detectives who searched the three-bedroom family flat discovered from hidden letters that Heshu was planning to run away from home to start a new life. In one of the letters she told her father that she wanted to be alone and that he should not try to track her down.

Another passage read: “Bye dad. Sorry I was so much trouble. Me and you will probably never understand each other. BUT I’m sorry I wasn’t what you wanted, but there’s some things you can’t change. Hay (sic) for an older man you have a good strong punch and kick. I hope you enjoyed testing your strength on me, it was fun being on the receiving end. WELL DONE.”

Judge Denison, QC, sentencing Yones to life imprisonment yesterday, told him: “The killing and the manner of it was an appalling act. This is in any view a tragic story arising out of irreconcilable cultural difficulties between traditional Kurdish values and the values of Western society. It’s plain that you strongly and genuinely disapproved of the lifestyle in this country of your daughter.”

After the hearing Commander Andy Baker of the Metropolitan Police’s Serious Crime Directorate said the murder had been carried out with abhorrent brutality. He has now ordered an investigation into whether some members of the Kurdish community in London attempted to cover up for Yones.

Yones, who smiled in the dock during the hearing, brought his wife and three children to Britain as political refugees in 1991. He had been committed to the Kurdish freedom movement in Iraq and many of his extended family had been tortured and murdered by Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Heshu’s lifestyle caused considerable tension in the family, especially with her father, and she tried hard to keep her boyfriend and social life a secret from them. She had been going out with Nizam al-Khouri for almost a year when she died and had frequently played truant from her school, the William Morris Academy, to be with him.

Icah Peart, for the defence, told the Old Bailey that Yones could only recall that he completely lost control with his daughter but had no idea how the knife got into his hand.

He said the defendant asked that he be executed for killing the daughter he regarded as the “jewel in his crown”.

He added that Heshu’s death had left Yones a broken man. Police, however, remained sceptical about Yones’s expression of remorse and said he had shown no signs of it to them.

In interviews he refused to comment beyond claiming that he was innocent and persisting in claiming that his home had been stormed by al-Qaeda terrorists who had killed his daughter and tried to kill him.

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