Murdered wife was let down by police, grieving relatives claim

THE family of a woman who was murdered by her husband while on the phone to the police have accused the authorities of letting her down.

Raneem Oudeh, 22, left her husband Janbaz Tarin, 21, after discovering that he had a secret family in Afghanistan.

Weeks later, despite her reporting Tarin’s harassment and threats to police and winning a court injunction, Ms Oudeh was stabbed to death alongside her mother Khaloa Saleem, 49.

As he launched his attack, she was calling police in the early hours to report that he had confronted her outside her mother’s home in Solihull, Birmingham Crown Court was told.

As Tarin was jailed for life with a minimum term of 32 years yesterday, the two women’s heartbroken family said the police should have done more to protect Ms Oudeh.

They revealed that a few weeks before the murder, Ms Oudeh, who had a two-year-old son from a previous relationship, had said she feared she would be killed.

The judge, Mrs Justice Sue Carr, told Tarin, who admitted both murders, that his crimes had devastated an entire family.

Ms Oudeh, who met Tarin when they were students at a local college, was attacked outside her mother’s home in the early hours of August Bank Holiday last year.

When Mrs Saleem attempted to save her daughter from the onslaught, she too was fatally stabbed by Tarin – who fled and went on the run for three days.

Tarin began “harassing” Ms Oudeh to marry him shortly after meeting her, later telling her: “When I saw you, I said this is mine.” After their marriage, he turned violent, threatening to kill her if she ever left him.

Her aunt, Nour Norris, said: “Unfortunately, she only told us that at the end because she knew she couldn’t cope with him any more, with all the violence he was giving her.

“One day she said to me, ‘Auntie, I feel my life’s going to end.’ I said, ‘Don’t say that.’ “That was a few weeks before she was murdered.”

Two weeks before the murder, Ms Oudeh, who came to Britain from Syria, had obtained an injunction. Mrs Norris said: “They felt very strong after they

‘One day she said to me, “Auntie, I feel my life’s going to end.” A few weeks later she was murdered’

had the court order, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough to save their lives.”

Asked if she believed the police and authorities had failed to do enough that night to stop Tarin, and in the months beforehand to protect the victim, Mrs Norris replied: “Yes we do.

“That last call, the police were on the phone so they knew she was getting harmed but we couldn’t believe they couldn’t locate him straight away.

“Because they knew about it there and then, so that was one of the things that made us feel more unhappy, more sad, more let down by the authorities.”

Police defended their actions at the time, saying that they had done all they could. The Independent Office of Police Conduct is investigating the circumstances surrounding the police response after a self-referral by West Midlands Police.