The five Muslim women killed in recent months were murdered by their
husbands or partners because they had "insulted" the family honour by wanting to
end the relationship.

One woman was strangled; another drowned in a bath. In another case, a 21-year-old Turkish woman who was forcibly married to her cousin was stabbed to death on the street by her husband in front of their three-year-old daughter. Police records show that 45 "honour killings" have been committed within Germany's two million-plus Muslim community in the past eight years. Now that at least five have occurred in just four months in Berlin alone, the German authorities and local Turkish leaders are desperately trying to find out why.