ROME (AP) — An Italian appeals courtroom Friday upheld life sentences for a Pakistani couple convicted of murdering their 18-year-old daughter in a so-called honor killing after she refused an organized marriage. The case shocked many Ital ians and have become an emblem of the brutal mistreatment of immigrant girls who insurgent towards rigid household guidelines.
The appeals courtroom within the northern metropolis of Bologna stated that Saman Abbas, whose physique was discovered at a farmhouse in 2022, 18 months after she disappeared, was killed with the participation of the entire household.
The courtroom upheld a life sentence for each {the teenager}’s father, Shabbir Abbas, and her mom, Nazia Shaheen. It additionally sentenced to life in jail two cousins who had been beforehand cleared by a decrease courtroom.
Saman’s uncle, Danish Hasnain, was additionally sentenced to 22 years in jail for his involvement within the homicide. He had been beforehand given a 14-year sentence.
The courtroom case, in Reggio Emilia in northern Italy, grew to become t he most high-profile of several criminal investigations in Italy in recent years dealing with the slaying or mistreatment of immigrant women or girls who rebelled against their family ‘s insistence that they marry somebody chosen for them.
So-called honor killings are widespread in Pakistan, the place members of the family and family typically kill girls who don’t comply with native traditions and tradition or determine to marry somebody of their very own alternative.
Saman Abbas’ physique was dug up in November 2022 in an deserted farmhouse close to the fields the place her father labored in northern Italy. Italian prosecutors contend the lady was murdered by her household on Could 1, 2021. A couple of days later, her mother and father flew from Milan to Pakistan.
Saman Abbas’ father was later arrested in Pakistan and extradited to Italy for prosecution. Her mom was convicted in absentia however was arrested in Could final 12 months after three years on the run.
Abbas’ uncle, two cousins, her father and her mom went on trial first in February 2023. All of the defendants have denied wrongdoing.
Saman Abbas had emigrated as a young person from Pakistan to the farm city of Novellara in Italy’s northern area of Emilia-Romagna. She rapidly embraced Western methods, together with shedding her scarf and courting a younger man of her alternative. In a single social media put up, she and her Pakistani boyfriend had been proven kissing on a avenue within the regional capital, Bologna.
In accordance with Italian investigators, that kiss enraged Abbas’ mother and father, who wished her to marry a cousin in Pakistan.
The younger girl was final seen alive on April 30, 2021 a couple of hundred meters (yards) away from the place her physique was found in surveillance digital camera video as she walked along with her mother and father on the watermelon farm the place her father labored.
Abbas had reportedly instructed her boyfriend that she feared for her life due to her refusal to marry an older man in her homeland.
An post-mortem revealed a damaged neck bone, probably brought on by strangulation.
In 2019, Italy made coercing an Italian citizen or resident into marriage, even overseas, against the law lined beneath home violence legal guidelines.
Following Abbas’ disappearance, Italy’s union of Islamic communities issued a non secular ruling rejecting compelled marriages.
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