A socially acceptable form of murder: honour killings in Russia’s North Caucasus - The Independent

On the sweltering August week she was to die – choked to death by her own uncle – Mariam Magomedova had returned home to the village of Nechayevka in Dagestan, to celebrate her cousin's wedding. 

Relatives on her mother's side recalled their joy at seeing the tall, beautiful, serious 22-year-old – practically everyone remembered her thus – on a rare trip back from Moscow. They had even helped her buy the ticket home. They couldn't have known what lay in store. It was as much of a shock to them as it was to her.

The gods never looked out for Mariam, says her aunt, Patimat Abdulmuslimova. The girl's terrible run of luck started two years before she died, when she was hitched against her will to a cousin 14 years her senior. The wedding went ahead regardless of her protestations; joyless, and with a lot of crying. There was a terrible omen that day, says Abdulmuslimova, when the wedding party crossed paths with a funeral procession.

Nobody in Nechayevka knows quite why Mariam Magomedova was killed. There were certainly lots of stories, recalls Umarazat Magomedova, head teacher at the local middle school (no relative). The girl was already divorced by this point, the teacher says, but for some reason relatives on the father's side were animated by SMS messages she may or may not have exchanged with a man. No one saw those messages, or could even say what they contained.