Two Metropolitan Police officers face the sack after a young woman murdered in an honour killing was “let down” by police who showed a lack of understanding and insensitivity, the police watchdog said yesterday.

Banaz Mahmod, 20, asked police for help four times and even gave them a list of five people she suspected would harm her and her lover but was not taken seriously.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission found that an initial investigation was flawed, subsequent lines of inquiry were not followed and there was poor supervision.

It recommended that a further six detectives - four from the Metropolitan Police and three from West Midlands Police - should receive written warnings.

Ms Mahmod, 20, disappeared from her home in Mitcham, south London, in January 2006.

Her body was found 100 miles away buried in a suitcase in a garden in Birmingham three months later.

An Old Bailey trial heard that her Iraqi Kurd father and uncle ordered her death after her affair with fellow Kurd Rahmat Sulemani was discovered.

The IPCC examined five separate matters, three of which it ruled were handled “appropriately” and with compassion by officers.

But it found police failings in dealing with complaints Ms Mahmod made in September 2005 and an incident three months later where she was found in a distressed state in a cafe.

Ms Mahmod made allegations of historic physical sexual abuse to the Metropolitan Police on September 14, 2005.

The case was passed to West Midlands Police because the alleged incidents took place there, but she was only interviewed on October 10 and did not sign her statement until January 10, 2006, just days before her murder.

The IPCC ruled that the Metropolitan Police could have done more in its dealings with Ms Mahmod. It also found that the initial West Midlands Police investigation was “flawed, not done in a timely fashion and poorly supervised”.

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