A 22-year-old woman was stabbed to death by her husband after multiple pleas to the police for help and making a terrifying prediction, according to reports. Raneem Oudeh was told by officers to return to her mother's home in Solihull after asking for protection from Janbaz Tarin, 21, four times in two hours. When she arrived, Tarin was waiting in a bush with a 13-inch knife and brutally stabbed both his wife and her mother, 49-year-old Khaola Saleem.
Pleas for help ignored
The horrific double murder, which took place in 2018, has gained fresh attention after being featured on ITV's Murder UK series. Nour Norris, Ms Oudeh's aunt, told the programme: "She said to me, 'Auntie, I think he's going to kill me.' And I said, 'We have the police. You need to report all of this.'" Ms Norris said the 22-year-old replied that she had already gone to the police but "they are not going to do anything" because "he's very good at manipulating them".
A life cut short
Ms Oudeh met her killer when she was just 19, shortly after her family fled to Britain from war-torn Syria. Ms Norris told ITV: "When she came, she loved it. She had a great voice and wanted to be a singer one day. She had all the hopes in the world when she came to the UK. She was happy to just study and she didn't want anything else, really. I don't think she really wanted a man in her life."
But Tarin began hounding his victim after meeting her at Solihull College, telling her "you'll be mine" and calling her obsessively, The Sun reports. "He had a very strong character and was 'I'm the man here', and everyone, in some ways, thought he was great," Ms Norris said. "He'd spend a lot of money on everybody. He'd buy her lunch ... and was very much a man of control."
A campaign of abuse
He briefly backed off when Ms Oudeh married another man, but she went on to split from him just days before giving birth to their child. In June 2016, Tarin re-entered her life and threatened to hurt her family unless she agreed to marry him. "I think she was trying to be strong and clever by going along with his plan, but didn't know what she was going along with," Ms Nour said.
That September, the couple married in an Islamic ceremony, which is not legally recognised in the UK, with Tarin threatening to kill her and her family if she ever left him. He then became physically and mentally abusive, according to reports, with Ms Oudeh pulling away from her family as a result. Ms Nour said: "She kept disappearing and not wanting anyone to come down to her house ... She didn't want it to end because she knows if he ends it, it's the end of her life. We knew it was very bad, but we didn't know how bad it was."
The final night
Ms Oudeh finally decided to leave Tarin in 2018 after discovering that he had a pregnant wife and two children in Afghanistan. But he responded by ramping up his campaign of harassment, including sleeping in a car outside her mother's house for 12 days. The 22-year-old, who had moved in with her mother for safety, took out a non-molestation order against him, preventing him from coming near her or contacting her.
On the evening of her death, however, Tarin followed Ms Oudeh and her mother to Rotana Sheesha Bar in Birmingham and violently confronted them before being thrown out of the venue. Terrified, she called the police and waited in the restaurant for half an hour before retreating to the car with her mother. Meanwhile, Tarin travelled back to his family home and armed himself with a 13-inch kitchen knife.
Police returned Ms Oudeh's call at midnight and told her to go home, lock the doors and let them know if he returned. But when they got back, the killer was lying in wait in the bushes and launched his frenzied attack. He was tracked down by police to the store room of a Birmingham corner shop three days later, and sentenced to life in jail with a minimum of 32 years.
Nine West Midland Police officers received misconduct notices as a result, with the police watchdog describing the incident as "profoundly disturbing". Ms Nour said: "We need to protect women by allowing their voices to be heard. By making a better system. Those vulnerable women, we need to give them wings. We need to make them stronger, not weaker."
