A man broke down yesterday as he told a jury how his lover was murdered by her father and uncle because it was thought their relationship brought dishonour on her Kurdish family.

Rhamat Suleimani, 28, said he had been told that he and Banaz Mahmod, 21, would be killed if they carried on their relationship.

Miss Mahmod, who had left an arranged and unhappy marriage, was found strangled and dumped in a suitcase in the back garden of a home in Birmingham last April. She had been missing since January.

Giving evidence at the trial into her murder, Mr Suleimani said they had continued to meet in secret and planned to have children. But they became petrified when Miss Mahmod thought that her father was planning to kill her, said Mr Suleimani. He told the court that he was threatened by a gang which said that because he was Muslim and Kurdish he could not choose his girlfriend.

At one point Miss Mahmod’s mother had warned him to “watch his back”, he said.

Mr Suleimani, who works for a shipping firm, sobbed in the dock as the Old Bailey court was shown a mobile phone video he had made of his lover in a hospital bed covered in blood. In the recording she claimed she was scared of her father, Mahmod Mahmod, 52, who had plied her with drink and made her carry a suitcase to her grandmother’s home in Wimbledon.

The prosecution claims that she cut herself when she fled from her father, who was intending to kill her.

Mr Suleimani said that Miss Mahmod’s father was strict and maintained tight control over his family at their home in Mitcham, South London. He said that when Mr Mahmod discovered the couple were seeing each other he demanded the relationship end.

“I said that I can’t leave her and she can’t leave me. I said it’s because we loved each other,” Mr Suleimani said.

He called Miss Mahmod and put her on speaker phone for her father to hear. “She began to cry and she said, ‘You have got no reason to leave me. I love you and don’t want to leave you’. Her father said no matter what the situation is, no matter what she means to me, no matter what I mean to her, we would never be together and I should leave her.”

Mr Mahmod and his brother Ari Agha, a 50-year-old businessman, both from Mitcham, deny murder. Mohamad Hama, 30, from West Norwood, South London, an associate of the uncle, has admitted murdering Miss Mahmod in January last year.

Mr Suleimani, a Kurd who came to Britain in 2000 from his home country of Iran, met Miss Mahmod in 2004 when she was still married but did not begin a relationship with her until the following summer.

He said that he was brought up Muslim but did not believe in the strict interpretation of the religion. He also did not belong to the Mirawdaly group of villages that Miss Mahmod came from, adding that it was rare for a Mirawdaly woman to marry outside of her group.

He said they kept their relationship secret because divorce in the Kurdish community was a “very difficult matter”.

“First of all the majority of Kurdish people are Muslim. Getting a divorce is really shameful to the family. The father is expected to try to fix it and make sure the daughter stays with the man she has married,” Mr Suleimani said.

Asked what happened if the father failed, he said: “It depends on how much that person loves his daughter. If the father has more love for his daughter than her husband’s family, then he will try to help his daughter get a divorce and settle with her life. If the father has connections with the husband or is scared of his family, then it’s big trouble for the daughter.

“It could lead to anything – disowning the daughter or killing her. It’s because they think it’s an honour for them. They think they are defending their shame and dignity by taking that life from that person.”

The trial continues.

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