Italy court upholds sentences for Pakistani parents who killed 18 YO after she refused to marry her cousin

A court in Italy upheld the life sentences of Pakistani parents who were found guilty of killing their 18-year-old daughter because she refused an arranged marriage with her older cousin. The body of the girl named Saman Abbas was discovered buried in a farmhouse near her father’s office back in 2022.

The authorities found the body 18 months after she was first reported to be missing. After a thorough investigation, it was discovered that the young woman was murdered by her family, and since her neck was broken, the investigators believed that she died by strangulation.

The recent judgment in the case came on Friday following an appeal from Abbas’s parents to reduce the sentence. The authorities started suspecting that her parents were involved in the killing since they flew from Milan to Pakistan while the girl was still classified as missing.

What the case is about

In the Friday ruling, Abbas’s mother, Nazia Shaheen, father Shabbir Abbas, uncle Danish Hasnain, and two cousins were sentenced for her killing. Hasnian was originally sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment but has since been re-sentenced to 22 years.

It is pertinent to note that Shabbir Abbas was extradited from Pakistan to Italy to serve his sentence, while Abbas’s mother was tried in absentia. She was eventually arrested near the Pakistani-occupied Kashmir border after she managed to escape prosecution for three years.

Meanwhile, the young girl’s uncle and cousins fled to France and Spain but were also later arrested. Even in the recent hearing, the family continued to deny any wrongdoing. Shabbar Abbas went on to tell the court in the earlier hearings that “never in my life did I think of killing my daughter.”

The Abbas family moved to northern Italy from Pakistan when Saman was 14. The court filings stated that her family was deeply angered when she quickly adapted to “Western culture”. According to The Associated Press, she chose not to wear a head covering and posted photos of kissing her boyfriend in the streets.

She reportedly told her boyfriend that she was afraid for her life because she refused her parents’ demand to marry her older cousin back in Pakistan. According to the BBC, she spent several months living under the care of social services but eventually returned to her family home before her murder.

With inputs from the Associated Press.